Soul's Light
by Chengar Qordath
Summary: It all started when Harry's Faerie Godmother showed up three years after Second Impact to ask him for a tiny little favor. Next thing you know, he's in Japan as a consultant to Gehirn and the Artificial Evolution Laboratory...
1. Harry I

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

I've always known that when I'm really tired I can be a heavy sleeper, but I still can't believe I slept through the Second Impact.

I've never told anyone about that. After all, wizards are supposed to know things; hell's bells, it's in our very names that we're supposed to wise. For Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, Wizard-for-Hire, to sleep through a world-shattering cataclysm really doesn't fit the all-knowing all-seeing image a proper wizard is supposed to project. What kind of crappy two-bit conjurer sleeps through the planet getting hit by a meteor bigger than the one that did in the dinosaurs?

This one, apparently.

I did have some really nasty nightmares when it happned; that much death creates a disturbance, millions of voices crying out in terror, and then being suddenly silenced. It gave me some nasty nightmares, but with the life I lead bad dreams aren't anything new. I tossed and turned, but I didn't wake up.

In my defense on the whole sleeping through the apocalypse thing, Second Impact didn't really have that much force left by the time it got all the way to Chicago; the tremors were only about a 4.0 on the scale, and the sum total of the damage to my apartment was a couple broken bottles that fell off the shelves in my basement. The Second Impact was huge, but being more than 8,000 miles away from Antarctica meant that Chicago barely got touched by it directly, and this far inland the tsunamis weren't a problem.

Naturally, a lot of the people closer to where it all happened slept through it too, because they were dead before they had a clue what was going on. The shockwave from the impact more-or-less killed every single living thing within two thousand miles of Antarctica, but the real killers were the earthquakes and megatsunamis.

It always seems strange pretty much nobody I knew died from the Second Impact. After all, by the time we finally got things settled down, Earth's human population had been cut in half. Of course, having magic can be handy when it comes to surviving the apocalypse; turns out wards designed for keeping out vampires, demons, and all other manner of nasties can do a decent job against extinction level events too, and a quick hop into the Nevernever will get you out of the worst-hit areas and away from the megatsunamis.

It also doesn't help that the Second Impact really wasn't an equal opportunity apocalypse. If you were south of the Equator or you could draw a straight line between wherever you lived and Antarctica without passing over any major landmasses or mountains, you were almost certainly dead. If you were north of the Equator and had someone else between you and the megatsunamis, you were probably alright.

In other words, South America, Africa, Australia, and Southern Asia all got screwed over, while Europe, North America, and Japan barely got scratched. I took it as proof that the universe has a nasty sense of humor; those parts of the world spend a few centuries getting screwed over by the people to the north of them, and just when we decide that maybe we shouldn't screw them over quite over so much, a big meteor kills them all.

Now, Antarctica getting melted meant enough water got added to the oceans for pretty much everyone living on the coast to be in trouble, but that much water takes time to spread out across the entire planet, especially since so much of it went out in the megatsunamis. By the time the water level evened out just about every coastal city was underwater, but the cities that weren't nailed by megatsunamis and were lucky enough to be in First World nations had enough time to evacuate just about everyone important. Some poor people and homeless folks got left behind, but nobody in a position of power seemed to shed too many tears over that, except for when they did it while there were cameras rolling.

The weirdest thing about the Second Impact was how little it really changed things. Sure, there was a huge refugee crisis, the rest of the world finally decided to give the UN some teeth, and the economy was in the pits for a few years, but by the time 2003 rolled around, things were pretty close to normal again if you lived in one of the areas that hadn't gotten hit too badly. Kids went to school, adults went to work, and people just went on with their lives, as if half the human race hadn't been wiped out a few years ago. I don't know if that's a testament to the endurance of the human spirit's ability to endure tragedy, or just proof that most people are callous, unfeeling bastards.

Now, on the spooky side of things, everything went crazy, but not really in a bad way. Well, there were some initial bits of trouble in the immediate aftermath, like that crazy pack of FBI werewolves I had to deal with about a month after the Impact, but that was an isolated incident. However, the White Council came out of the whole thing surprisingly intact; like I said before, wizards are good at staying alive, and have lots of tricks up their sleeve. It also probably didn't hurt that the Council's always been a bit Eurocentric; don't get the wrong idea, we don't call it the White Council because we like the dress up in bedsheets and burn crosses on people's lawns, it's just that Europe's always been the traditional heartland of the Council, and Europe took almost no damage from Second Impact.

Now, a lot of people would think that having half of the next generation of prospective wizards wiped out might have been a serious long-term problem for the White Council, but you'd be mistaken. While the Council would never admit it, the simple truth was that it didn't have the resources or organization to handle humanity's explosive population growth during the 20th century, and the accompanying rise in young people with magical talents. Now that the number of young wizards coming into their powers had been cut in half, the Council was doing a much better job of it.

Way too many kids wind up going warlock not because they're inherently evil, but because they don't have any clue what they're getting into. It's easy to start breaking the Laws of Magic when you don't know what the laws are, and once you start using dark magic it blackens your soul to the point where soon you don't care anymore. Magic comes from the soul, the very essence of who you are; once you start using it do bad things, it warps your perspective. Instead of people, you see meat-puppets to mind control, or potential corpses for your zombie army. I would know how dangerous dark magic; I've come a lot closer to crossing the line than I'd ever like to admit.

That said, while the Laws of Magic are important, I don't always agree with how the Council enforces the laws, considering the fact that the only solution they ever like to use is to have a Warden with a really big sword lop your head off, and one of those heads nearly wound up being mine (and I like my head is just fine exactly where it is). However, fewer new young wizards means fewer kids slipping through the cracks, which means less kids getting their heads chopped off for dabbling in things they shouldn't because they didn't know any better. I won't complain about Molly becoming my apprentice within a few weeks of her talents manifesting; after all, she's my best friend Michael's daughter, and has enough of a rebellious streak that I just know she would have gotten herself into all kinds of trouble if I hadn't been able to keep an eye on her.

But enough about us wizards; as you might have noticed, we have a tendency to talk about ourselves as if we're the biggest, toughest kids on the block. Now, don't get me wrong, a pissed-off wizard is not something you want to have aimed at you, but we're not necessarily the top of the food chain; it's a big, scary world out there, and most wizards are still squishy human meatbags at the end of the day, even if we are squishy human meatbags who know some really cool tricks.

First off, there are the Vampires. One of those handy little side benefits of Second Impact was that the Red Court was pretty much gone, and good riddance to the freaky bat-faced bastards. Apparently, when you put the Red King up against a 1000 foot wall of water moving at slightly less than the speed of sound, the Red King loses. The Red Court's base of power had always been South America, and like I said earlier, South America got the short end of the stick in the Apocalypse lottery. There were still plenty of Red Court vamps outside of South America, and not all of the South American vamps were dead, but groups like the Fellowship of St. Giles decided this was the perfect time to settle a couple centuries worth of grudges against the Reds. I certainly didn't complain when they burned down the Velvet Room and a put an end to Bianca and her lot, though any rumors that they had some help from your friendly neighborhood wizard are vicious lies with no factual basis.

Honest.

While the Reds were vamps that really got his hard by Second Impact, they're not the only bloodsuckers running around. The White Court Vampires were so enmeshed in the upper echelons of human society that they had an easy time surviving, and the Black Court vamps had survived centuries of being hunted down by everyone with enough sense to read Bram Stoker's How-to-Guide for killing them weren't going to be fazed by a little thing like the apocalypse. Luckily for the rest of the world, the White Court seemed content with using the rebuilding process to boost its wealth, power, and influence within mortal society. The Blacks were not nearly so helpful, but as nasty as the Black Court was on an individual basis, there just aren't enough of them to cause serious problems.

Then you've got your assorted demons, ghosts, and other critters. Obviously, having three billion people killed off left behind some ghost problems, but it's pretty rare for ghosts to be a serious problem for a fully trained and prepared practitioner. Ghost-hunting has kind of been my bread-and-butter since the Second Impact. It's not glamorous work, but it pays the bills.

The worst bit of excitement I've had since the Impact (not counting the razing of Bianca's, which I most definitely was not involved in) was a nasty run-in with a group of demons called the Order of the Blackened Denarius. Seriously bad news. Supposedly, there are thirty of them, each of them trapped in old Roman silver coin (yes, those thirty pieces of silver), and they want to finish the job Second Impact started. Apparently, they think that if they kill enough people, it start the end times … or maybe they just like killing people for shits and giggles, it's hard to tell. Worst of all, their leader Nicodemus has definitely read and memorized the Evil Overlord List. He didn't even tell me his entire evil plan when he had me at his mercy and was about to kill me, which is definitely cheating. Still, with some help from Michael, a couple other Knights of the Cross, a mob boss, and possible divine intervention, we managed to save the world.

I did wind up with one nasty little side effect from that adventure. After we foiled his scheme, Nicodemus tossed out one last parting shot, and threw one of those demon-coins at Michael's youngest kid, two-year-old Harry (I've always been somewhere between honored and a bit embarrassed that Michael actually named one of his kids after me. I mean, I'm not the kinda guy you should name your kids after). The kid naturally wanted to pick up the pretty shiny coin, so I had to grab it myself to keep him from taking it. Grabbing the coin left me open to the demon inside of it, but I'd rushed back to my lab and torn up my basement floor to very thoroughly bury the coin, and then slapped every single containment spell I knew over it. At least I'd survived the experience without getting taken over by demon, and with the coin seemingly safely buried and contained for the last couple months, I was reasonably certain I'd dodged any permanent damage.

So, that's everyone except for the Fae. Things have been more than a little screwed up in the Nevernever ever since the Second Impact. Apparently, all the scientists who said that the planet would freeze after a big meteor hit got it wrong, because instead we've had eternal summer. Now, for the most part the Fae are split into two camps, the Summer Court, and the Winter Court, and they hate each other. As you might have guessed from the names, a lot of their power and influence is tied to the turning of the seasons, so non-stop summer for several years throws things horribly out of balance. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that ever since the Second Impact Summer has been kicking Winter's ass whenever they have their big faerie fights.

Now, personally I wasn't too bothered by the fact that Winter was losing. I would like to think that's because Summer has always been liked to growth and rebirth, something the planet could really use after the Second Impact, but in truth my reasons were mostly selfish. See, back when I was young and stupid (well, stupider than I am now), I'd made a deal with a winter Fae known as The Leanansidhe (or Lea, if felt like saving a couple syllables of effort). At the time, it had seemed like a good idea.

The really dumb ones always do.

So, long story short, when it was time for me to hold up my end of the bargain, I decided that I didn't want to let Lea turn me into a dog after all, and tried to back out of the deal.

The Leanansidhe was less than pleased by this development.

So, ever since then I've made a habit of trying to stay out of her way. Fae are limited in what they can do outside of the Nevernever, and cold iron will mess up just about anything they can do magically or physically. Needless to say, I try to have some on me at all times. However, with Winter on the metaphorical ropes, I was pretty sure that Lea had bigger problems to deal with than one wizard who welched on a deal a decade ago. Eventually, I got a bit too confident, and stopped being careful.

Stupid, stupid me.

* * *

"Good Morning Harry." The melodic voice that woke me up sounded entirely too cheerful for this early in the morning. Some people wake up full of cheer and energy, ready to leap out of bed and experience the joys of a brand new day, and those of us who aren't insane know that a new day will just bring the same thing we got yesterday, and would rather have a bit more sleep before dealing with yet another day of the same crap as yesterday.

When my response was limited to a vague grunt and burrowing a bit further into my pillow, the woman repeated her greeting, a touch of frosty annoyance entering her tone. I meant to respond by asking for five more minutes before I had to wake up, but between my half-awake state and the fact that my head was still buried in a pillow, what actually came out of my mouth sounded more or less like. "Mphrghlmmslpfvmrmnts"

Moments later, I was completely drenched in water so cold that there were actually chips of ice in it. An instant later I was entirely awake, and glaring murderously at the woman who thought it would be a good idea to douse me in ice water, until my mind woke up enough to process just who the tall, slender, and impossibly beautiful woman with an ageless face and long, lustrous red hair was. Now, normally being woken up by incredibly beautiful woman isn't a bad way to start the day, but this particular was one of the last people I ever wanted to see.

"Good morning Harry." The Leanansidhe declared brightly, a disturbingly pleasant smile on her face. The smile didn't quite reach her bright green eyes, a few too many teeth showed behind her blood-red lips, making her smile seem less like a pleasant greeting and more like a cat who had come upon a particularly tasty morsel of food.

I feel I should make it absolutely clear that the sounds which issued out of my throat when I realized that Lea had somehow managed to bypass all of my wards and ambush me in my sleep were manly bellows of shock and dismay, and most certainly not high-pitched girlish shrieks of terror. Because I am a man, and men don't scream like little girls, even when they're terrified out of their wits.

"Are you quite done?" Lea asked with an amused smirk once the last of my manly bellows subsided.

"Why are you here, Lea?" Despite the fact that it was probably pointless after my little display earlier, I tried very hard not to let even a tiny bit of fear show in my voice.

Lea arranged her face into an annoyed pout. "Harry, Harry, Harry. You never come to visit any more. I haven't seen you once since before the Second Impact. What kind of godson doesn't even take the time visit his godmother once for three years?"

Yes, I have a faerie godmother. Obviously, whoever it is that's responsible for assigning them made a mistake somewhere along the line, because instead of a benevolent guardian who gives me pumpkin carriages and glass slippers, I got a manipulative bitch who wants to strip away my humanity. Why do I always get the short end of the stick? "Lea, we both know that if I had actually tried to visit you any time in the last three years, you would've used it as a chance to turn me into one of your hellhounds."

"La, excuses." The Leanansidhe dismissed my facts as utterly irrelevant with an airy wave of her hand. A moment later she brightened up and returned to laying on the charm, accompanying it with a low-level glamour. "In any case, child, let's not dwell on the past, when we should be discussing your future."

"My future. Right. Does it involve turning me into a hellhound? Because that's not happening" I dragged myself out of bed, and set my mind to getting out of my damp pajamas. I pulled out a reasonably clean T-shirt and a pair of slightly ratty jeans, and then nearly made a terrible mistake by asking Lea to leave the room while I changed. You don't ask Sidhe for favors, even piddling, insignificant little ones like giving you privacy to change your clothes. Asking a Fae for a favor creates an obligation on your part to do a favor for them in return. That's how I'd gotten into this whole mess with Lea in the first place, but I like to think that after my early screw-ups I learned my lesson.

I thought about going into the bathroom to change, but that would mean taking my eyes off of Lea for long enough to let her cause all kinds of trouble. Granted, if she'd really wanted to do so, she probably would have done whatever she pleased before waking me up; as it was, I would need to toss out all of the food in my pantry and fridge, just in case she'd enchanted any of it or replaced some of it with fae food. After a moment's hesitation, I resigned myself to changing in front of Lea; it's not like she was human after all, Even so, I decided that my boxers were clean enough to not need changing.

Lea gave my body a clinical glance, and let out a tut of disapproval. "Really child, you're skin and bones. When was the last time you had a proper meal?"

At the mention of food my stomach gave a loud grumble, making it's thoughts on the matter known. Of course, since Lea had broken into my apartment, I couldn't trust any of the food I had, so my only option was to go out. Sadly, a quick check of my rather deflated wallet revealed the flaw with that plan.

The Leanansidhe was quick to pounce on the opportunity. "I shall make you an offer, child. I shall provide you with a proper meal. Untainted mortal food." Lea pre-empted my first objection. "In exchange, you will hear me out. I offer you my pledge that I shall not attempt to coerce or threaten you in any way, or incite any other Fae to do so, or target any friend or associate of yours, nor will I use this as a means to collect upon the debt you owe me. No tricks. No hidden loopholes. We shall simply sit, eat, and discuss."

I considered the offer a moment, carefully searching it for any hidden traps. Fae were bound to always keep their word, but they were also very good at finding ways to keep to the letter of any promise they made while thoroughly violating the spirit of the promise. "I'm free to leave to at any time?" That was one bullet dodged; otherwise, Lea could have kept me there for years, claiming that the conversation wasn't over yet.

"You will give me at least half an hour of your time after our arrival at a mortal restaurant of your choice." Lea countered with a knowing smile on her face. "You'll not simply stuff your face in a few seconds, and then run out the door."

I thought it over a bit longer, and couldn't find any other ways for my Faerie Godmother to ruin my life with this particular bargain. In all likelihood, it was just the bait to set me up for what she really had in mind with the conversation she was fishing for; it was there that she would actually set the hook. "Fine."

"Excellent." The Leanansidhe's smile bore an uncanny resemblance to that of a cat who had just caught a particularly elusive mouse. Not a good thing at all when I'm the mouse. "Now then child, where do you wish to dine."

"Well, since you're paying, we'll go to the best restaurant in town."

* * *

"This is the best restaurant in town?" A mixture of disdain and skepticism colored Lea's voice.

"What can I say, I'm a simple man with simple tastes." I shot back glibly as the two of us walked into Burger King. "Sure, other places might have better food, but this is the only place that hands out a cheap cardboard crown along with the food."

"Charming." Lea deadpanned.

I put in my order with the pimply teenager running the counter, and had to repeat myself a few times since he was far more interested in gawking at Lea than he was in getting my order right. A few minutes later I had a tray full of fast food, and pair of cardboard crowns, one of which I promptly donned, while handing the other off to Lea. "Put it on; it's tradition. You're a guest in restaurant, you have to follow their traditions."

"Do you take pleasure from your constant efforts to bombard beings that could crush with a single thought with petty annoyances?" Lea asked in a long-suffering tone.

"Yes. Now put the damn crown on."

Lea let out an annoyed sigh and grumbled a few less than complimentary things about me under her breath, and then placed the crown on top of her head. "It is less trouble to simply indulge your silly whims than to argue with you."

"Hail to the Burger Queen." I declared loudly enough to draw a few stares from the other patrons in the diner.

I felt a chill run down my spine as Lea used a bit of her faerie mojo to distract anyone who might want to listen in on our conversation. "If you're quite done making a fool out of yourself, shall we get down to business?" Lea's tone made a glacier seem warm.

"I'm not making a fool out of myself, I'm making a fool out of you. Important difference." Despite my bravado, that was going to be last shot at Lea for a while; needling her was fun, but I could tell her patience was wearing thin, and pushing her over the edge into seriously pissed off would be the sort of thing I could end up regretting for a long, long time. So, no more being a smartass at the angry Fae … well, unless I came up with a really good line. "So, you wanted to talk. Start talking." I took a bite out of my sausage biscuit, only to discover that the sausage had apparently frozen into a solid block of ice right before I bit into it.

"Next time you ask for a meal, you might want to specify that you want your food to be hot, child." Lea offered me a wintry smile. "Or perhaps you could simply refrain from being an annoying pest for a few moments."

Content with having gotten the last word in, Lea unfroze my food with a casual wave of her hand. "Now then, to business. I wish to strike a bargain with you."

"No." The fact that my mouth was full of biscuit when I said it somewhat muffled the impact of the word.

"Will you not even deign to hear my offer out before you refuse it?" Lea offered me an amused grin.

"I think I've learned my lesson about taking anything you offer me." I shot back after I'd swallowed food and washed it down with some coffee. "I'm not doing too badly for myself right now; I've got enough work to pay the bills, and nobody's tried to kill me for a few months now. I don't need anything, and you don't have anything to offer that I want badly enough to get even more tangled up with you than I am already."

"Ah, but that's just the thing, child." Lea looked entirely too pleased with herself. "What I'm offering you now is a chance to clear all of your obligations to me."

The biscuit paused halfway to my mouth. Sure enough, she had found the one thing that could possibly convince me to cut another deal with her. My debt to the Leanansidhe had been hanging over my head for my entire adult life; the chance to finally settle the matter was … too tempting to ignore. "I'm listening."

"In return for this generosity, all I require from you is a simple favor. A few hours from now, you will receive a job offer. Accept the offer, and we will be quits." With a grin, Lea amended. "Aside from my role as your godmother, of course."

"What kind of job is this?" I asked warily. I've gotten plenty of weird job offers over the years; aside from the people who think the only wizard listed in the Chicago phone book is a great target for prank calls, you get plenty of people who want me to do things I either can't do or would get in huge amounts of trouble if I got caught doing, and you can't really explain the laws of magic to someone who barely even believes that magic is real. That's not to mention that some seriously nasty people have tried to recruit me over the years, running the gamut from a mob boss who thought a little magical muscle would help him tighten his grip on Chicago to the Order of the Blackened Denarius. No way in hell I would agree to accept any job before I knew what I was getting into.

"A simple consultation for a government agency." Lea announced breezily. "Not unlike the work you have done for this city's law enforcement, except on a slightly larger scale."

That caught my attention. I've done off-and-on consulting work for the Chicago Police for a while. It was a pretty simple arrangement; when weird stuff happens that they can't explain, they hire Chicago's only wizard to tell them what's going on. It had been a good arrangement, and the cops working at the Special Investigations department were good people; together, we'd stopped some seriously bad guys and monsters. Sadly, ever since the Second Impact the job offers from Special Investigations had been sparse; with all the money going into rebuilding a world that had been torn half to hell, there wasn't much left for things like hiring a wizard consultant whenever a weird body turned up at the morgue.

"So, this job. I go in, answer their questions, and leave. That's it?"

"That's it." Lea confirmed.

"Alright, what's the catch?" The old saying about being wary of anything that seems too good to be true goes double when it comes to dealing with Fae. "You've been holding this debt over my head for half my life; there's no way in hell you'd drop it just for a few hours of normal consulting work."

"Harry, I'm your godmother." Lea chided me, a disappointed expression decorating her face. "Why can't you just trust that I have your best interests at heart?"

"You tried to turn me into a hellhound."

"That was for your own good Harry. Besides, you shouldn't hold onto pointless grudges over things that are in the past."

"If I don't do this favor for you, you'll try to turn me into a dog again, won't you?" I suppose you do have to give my godmother credit for creativity; most people who try to threaten me into working form them go with the old classic of threatening me or my friends with death or severe bodily harm; obviously that was too mainstream for the Leanansidhe. Effective too; once you've gotten a couple dozen death threats they really start to lose their impact, but the idea of spending the rest of my life as a hellhound still scared the crap out of me. Death was quick; spending decades or even centuries as one of Lea's puppies wouldn't be.

"Harry, you can't spend your entire life worrying about what might happen in some vague, hypothetical future." The fact that she didn't actually deny that she would dog-ify me if I didn't do this favor for her spoke volumes; for all their skill as masters of deception, their very nature makes it impossible for the Fae to speak an outright lie. Of course, if she had wanted to Lea could have come up with a very effective way to spin the truth around on its head so I wouldn't know what her intentions were, but apparently she didn't feel the need to manipulate me subtly. After all, sometimes subtlety goes over my head, or just makes me even more of a wiseass than usual; brute force was a lot more reliable.

At the end of day, it wasn't really a hard choice to make. I'd spent a long time running away from Lea, most of my adult life really. By ambushing me this morning Lea sent a clear message; I couldn't run away from her forever. Hell's bells, for all I knew she might have just let me get away from her in the past because she thought chasing me was good sport. Now, it looked like running away wasn't really an option; even if I got away today, Lea wasn't the type to give up easily. I could either let Lea turn me into a hellhound, or go along with this job she wanted me to take, and maybe have a chance to finally get away from my entanglements with the faeries once and for all. I knew Lea's deal wasn't entirely on the level, but whatever the nasty surprise waiting for me was, it couldn't be worse than the certain doggyfication that awaited me if I didn't go along with it.

If I'd actually known just what the hell I was getting myself into when I agreed to Lea's deal, and just how much craziness I would have to deal with over the next dozen years because of it, I might have decided that spending the rest of my life as one of her hounds wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.

* * *

Author's Note: Since Evangelion is a wonderful mishmash of different continuities, I'm planning to take advantage of that to some degree with the story. This story will be based on the Eva TV series, but I will steal a few bits from the manga adaptation and/or the Rebuild movies when I think those versions put a slightly better spin on things.


	2. Harry II

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

After finishing up my rather awkward breakfast with my faerie godmother, I made my way back to my apartment to wait for that important phone call. As soon as I walked in the door thirty pounds of grey cat by the name of Mister rammed his shoulder into my legs by way of greeting. I used to that was a sign of affection, until one day I learned that was just how cats mark their property. Like a good slave, I put the leftovers from Burger King in Mister's food bowl, and the cat promptly deigned my offering to the master of the house sufficient, and promptly ignored me in favor of his food bowl.

Since I couldn't really do much else until I got the phone call Lea wanted me to take, I decided that I might as well clean myself up a bit; I might not have the strictest sense of professionalism in the world, but if I was going to be meeting a new client, especially one that according to Lea was fairly high up in the government, it couldn't hurt to put on a good appearance. If whatever Lea was getting me mixed up in didn't get me killed or worse, I might even manage to land a new regular client out of the deal, and even if the government paychecks usually takes a couple months to get through all the red tape, it was still good money, and the government never tried to run out on an invoice like some of clients had.

Sadly, there's only so much I can really do to actually make myself look good. After a shower, a shave, and pulling out a nice shirt and pair of slacks, I had only managed to go from looking like a tall, lanky, disreputable-looking man to a tall, lanky, scruffy-looking man.

Screw it; whoever this new client Lea wanted me to work for was, they needed a wizard, not a fashion model.

Fifteen minutes later the phone finally started ringing, the noise of it jarring in the silence of my apartment. After taking one last moment to prepare myself for whatever new flavor of life-threatening danger I was about to get myself into, I picked up the phone.

"Mister Harry Dresden?" The woman on the other end of the line had a soft, quiet voice, but instead of it making her sound timid or uncertain it gave her an air of calm assurance. Her English had an accent that was noticeable but not thick enough to be a problem.

"Speaking." There was a little static on our connection, probably thanks to the fact that my wizard-i-ness tends to mess around with most modern technology.

"Mr. Dresden, my name is Yui Ikari." I was a little surprised by her introduction; most people hesitate to give their name to a wizard, and for good reason. In the magical world Names have power, and a wizard like me can use someone's name as a channel to throw some nasty mojo their way. A moment later, I realized that it wasn't an oversight on her part; to get someone's Name exactly right is a tricky thing; each person says their own name a little differently, and conveys a slightly different sense of identity in how they present their name. That's why two people with the same name would still have different Names. Considering the soft hiss of static in the background of our conversation over the phone line, I couldn't have picked up on all the subtle details of her Name.

Bottom line, I didn't know her Name well enough to conjure by it, if I were so inclined. So, either she hadn't done her research on wizards and she'd gotten lucky, or she had done her homework very thoroughly, and was smart enough to know how to apply it. Knowing my luck, it was almost certainly the latter of the two options.

Of course, while my brain was busy pondering all this, she was still talking. "It is my understanding that you are something of an expert on paranormal matters, and that you have done consultation work in the past for the American government. You come highly recommended, and I wish to procure your services."

I couldn't help but wonder just who it was that had recommended me. After all, most of the ordinary people out there thought there was no such thing as magic and I was either a charlatan or a relatively harmless lunatic. That's not to mention that within the magical community itself I had a reputation for being a bit of a loose cannon, since I had this annoying habit of ignoring the long-established traditions of How Things Ought To Be Done in favor of actually doing what I thought was right.

Still, I suppose there were a few people out there who actually had a decent opinion of me; I'd always gotten along pretty well with the cops at Special Investigations, I'd gotten a bit of coverage in various yellow magazines that put stories next to me right next to the ones about Bigfoot being spotted in Vegas and Elvis being an alien, and I'm sure that my work with Michael and the other Knights of the Cross meant there was a file on me in the storehouse of the Ancient Catholic Conspiracy that so many trashy thriller novels insist exists. Hell's bells, you could probably even get a good recommendation from Gentleman John Marcone, head of the Chicago mafia; our paths had crossed a few times, and he'd even tried to hire me a few times despite the fact that every time we met I made it clear I thought he was a criminal scumbag and did my best to annoy him with my general smartassery.

Long story short, I might not have the best reputation to broader world, but there are a decent number of people who know me well enough to know that I'm a straight shooter who can get the job done. Obviously, this woman who wanted to hire me had been talking to the right people. Or, given Lea's involvement in this mess, maybe she was also tied up with the Faerie courts somehow.

"Mr. Dresden?" The woman on the other end of the phone line prompted, reminding me that while I was trying to figure out what was going on here, she was still waiting for an answer.

"Right. Yes, I do quite a bit of consulting work. Who exactly would I be working for, and what sort of consultation do you want?"

Yui Ikari considered my questions for a moment before answering. "You would be working for the United Nations Artificial Evolution Laboratory. I would prefer to discuss the details of the job in person."

Wow, Lea hadn't been kidding when she said I was moving up the food chain when it comes to government work. The UN had finally grown some teeth after the Second Impact; most of the places that got hit hardest didn't have much that resembled a working government left after it happened, and had effectively become UN territory. Makes sense, really; the only other option would have been to let Europe, the US, China, and Japan more-or-less turn the land back into colonies, and after the 20th century nobody wanted to go back to colonialism again. As it was, the newly-formed UN army was pretty busy fighting several nasty little brush wars against bandits and petty warlords who had taken advantage of the total collapse of government across half the planet to carve out their own little empires.

So, a UN-backed research lab was a big deal. "Never heard of the Artificial Evolution Laboratory before." I remarked casually. "What exactly are you up to that makes you think you need a wizard consultant?" I could take a few guesses; there were plenty of people with an interest in the occult after all, and the Second Impact had led to a huge increase of interest in pretty much every form of mysticism. Talk to any conspiracy theorist and you'll eventually start hearing about secret government research into psychics, ESP, and the occult. I never really gave those kind of rumors too much credence, but I wouldn't be shocked if it turned out that there actually were one or two government-backed labs that did try to figure out all the weirdness of the world.

"As I said, Mr. Dresden, I would rather not discuss the details over the phone. When do you think you might be available?"

I didn't really have anything pressing at the moment; I had a few cases I was working, but none of them were nearly important or urgent enough for me to brush off the UN, especially since my faerie godmother was involved as well. "My schedule is reasonably open. Where are your offices located?"

"Hakone."

"Hakone." I repeated dully. "That's in Japan, isn't it?" I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised; the UN was kind of a global organization after all, but for some reason I hadn't expected to get a job offer from Japan of all places. Well, at least now I could finally place the woman's accent.

"Yes, it is." I could swear I heard just a hint of amusement in Ikari's voice. "The UN will cover your travel expenses. If you wish, it would no trouble to charter a direct flight for you."

"Thanks, but I would rather make my own arrangements." Like I mentioned earlier, wizards and technology don't always get along. I had come up with a spell that let me suppress the magic within me down to a level it wouldn't mess with any tech around me, but it was a really delicate spell that was tricky to hold onto for a long time; last time I'd tried using it during an appearance on a trashy TV talk show (long story), there had still been plenty of little glitches. Needless to say, I certainly wasn't going to risk putting myself on plane crammed with all kinds of high-tech gizmos that was one malfunction away from plummeting several miles down into the Pacific Ocean.

"Very well." Yui gave me the street address for the Artificial Evolution Laboratory's main facility in Hakone. "When can I expect your arrival, Mister Dresden?"

"Couldn't say for sure, but I should be there within a day or two." I suppose the one advantage of being forced into this job by Lea was that I could actually take a shortcut through the Nevernever to get to Japan. Normally I avoided the Nevernever on her account, but she probably wouldn't cause trouble for me now that I was actually working off my debt to her. Of course, that still meant I would need to find a Way through the Nevernever from Chicago to Hakone; there were usually one or two reasonably well-known paths between any major cities, but since I'd never needed to go to Japan before I didn't know them.

"Very well, Mr. Dresden. I will await your arrival." That concluded the conversation, and after exchanging polite goodbyes with my newest client, I set my phone back in its cradle.

So, that was that. I still had no clue what I was getting myself into, but I was committed now. The journey through the Nevernever to Japan wouldn't take too long; if you knew where you were going, you could walk five feet in the Nevernever and come out a thousand miles away back in the real world. By saying I needed to day to get everything in order and make the journey, I had bought myself a few hours to do some research and try to get a handle on things.

I might not know Yui Ikari's name well enough to conjure by it, but that didn't mean I couldn't ask somebody to Google her.

After a taking few minutes to throw together something that vaguely resembled an actual plan, I picked the phone back up, and dialed a number I was very familiar with. Murphy answered on the third ring. "What mess have you gotten yourself into now, Harry?"

"Love you too, Murph." Lt. Karrin Murphy runs the Chicago PD's Special Investigations department, and over the years we've managed to develop a pretty solid working relationship, and somewhere between dealing with power-mad dark wizards, rogue FBI werewolves, and ancient demons planning to finish what the Second Impact started we actually became friends. "Besides, what makes you think I'm calling you because I'm in trouble?"

"You're not working on any cases for SI at the moment, all your current invoices have been paid, and nothing's happened recently that looks like it involved anything from the spooky side of town."

"Maybe I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice, Murph."

That got a sound halfway between a chuckle and an annoyed groan from Murphy. "Dresden, cut the bullshit, I'm having a bad day and I'm not in the mood."

That got a wince out of me. Murphy's job was stressful on a good day, and when she was having a bad day she could get downright snippy. Special Investigations had always been the black sheep of the Chicago PD, and the office politics between the different departments could get downright vicious. On top of the various oddball cases, SI got the nasty jobs nobody else wanted to deal with. Her mood also probably wasn't helped by the fact that I knew she felt guilty over the fact that with the post-impact budget cuts she couldn't afford to give me much in the way of paying work anymore.

Or maybe I was overanalyzing the whole thing, and the only reason Murphy was in such a sour mood was because it was that time of the month.

"C'mon Murph, you know you love it when I'm a wiseass. Anyway, I was hoping you could run down a bit of info for me; I've picked a big new client, and I want to know what I'm getting myself into." I gave Murphy a minute to find a pen and piece of paper to make notes on. "Client's name is Yui Ikari, and she works for the UN's Artificial Evolution Laboratory. Don't know much about what they're up to, but they were willing to charter a plane to get me over to their main lab in Japan, and Ikari never even asked what my rates were, so obviously they've got some serious financial backing."

I hesitated for a moment before adding in the next part. I was still getting used to the idea that I could actually talk to Murphy about everything that happens on the spooky side of the world. It's not like the White Council has hard and fast laws about covering up the supernatural and leaving the normal in the dark, but it was definitely frowned upon. In the end, I had decided that Murphy's needed to know what she was dealing with if she was going to be in charge of SI. "Hey Murph, remember when I told you about my faerie godmother? She showed up earlier today, and told me that if I didn't do this little consultation she'd turn me into one of her hounds, so whatever they're doing, it's big enough to make the faerie courts take notice."

"Your faerie godmother threatened to turn you into a dog?" Murphy had done a pretty good job adjusting her perceptions to just how crazy the magical world could be, but every once in a while she still got blindsided by something from outside of her comfort zone.

"Yeah, it's kind of her thing. Anyway, you think you can do a little digging, and see what you can turn up?"

"Yeah, sure thing Harry. Wouldn't want you end up being your godmother's bitch; that would be rough. I'll make a few inquiries, and see if I can save you from wasting time barking up the wrong tree."

"Oh, so I'm not allowed to be a smartass, but you are? And you even threw in bad puns!"

"It's a woman's prerogative to be inconsistent whenever she pleases."

"Well gee Murph, what happened to all the talk about how you shouldn't get special treatment just because you're a woman?"

"Bite me, Dresden." We fell into a companionable silence for a moment, and I congratulated myself on getting Murphy out of her funk. Sometimes my wiseassery does actually serve a purpose beyond giving me a few bad laughs. "I'll call you back in a couple hours and let you know what I find out, Harry."

After that, my next call was to the Carpenter household, to let Michael know I'd be out of town for a few days so he didn't need to bring Molly by for any of her lessons. Molly wasn't happy to hear that she'd be missing a couple lessons, but it wasn't the first time work got in the way of her training. It would be handy when she got to the point where she could study on her own; right now she was still in the very early stages of her apprenticeship, mostly learning basic magical theory, alongside a few practical lessons on how to not blow herself up. Needless to say, using any magic without me being there to supervise was out of the question.  
I considered letting Michael know I might be getting into another one of my situations, but decided against it. If he thought I was in any sort of trouble Michael would volunteer to help me without a moment's hesitation; he was too good of a man to do anything else. Thing is, even though as a Knight of the Cross he's a literal holy warrior, smiter of demons, and all-around badass, he also has a wife and kids. I might be heading for trouble, but for the moment it looked like trouble I could handle; I wouldn't take him away from his family and drag him into my problems without a damned good reason.

After that I thought about calling up one or two of my contacts on the Council to see what they knew, but again I decided against it. Working alongside the mortal law enforcement had raised enough hackles among the members of the White Council; if it got out that I was doing more work with higher figures in the non-magical world, it could go badly for me. More to the point, it could go badly for my friends on the Council, since they were the ones who would have to cover my ass if the Merlin or any of the other conservatives decided to raise a stink.

Now that I was done working the phones, it was time to try out a few other sources of information. My wizard's laboratory was probably in the presentable state it had seen in years; with an impressionable young apprentice around, I felt the need to set a good example. Or at least, that was the excuse I used whenever anyone asked. In truth, most of the reason my lab looked so clean was I'd recently done quite a bit of renovation on the floor for reasons nobody needed to know, and I just hadn't gotten around to messing things up again yet.

Granted, having my laboratory at the cleanest and most organized it had been in years still left it a disorganized mess by any objective standard. Turning towards a skull surrounded by several trashy romance novels, I called out. "Bob, we're going on a road trip. You know any good shortcuts through the Nevernever to get to Japan?"

Orange light kindled in the skull's eyes. "Yeah, I can get you there, but I'd have to tag along to get you there. You know how it is; can't be sure the Nevernever hasn't changed itself enough to throw off any directions I'd give you, especially since I haven't been there since the big kaboom." Despite what his name would indicate, Bob the Skull is not actually a talking skull, he's a spirit of intellect who just happens to reside in a skull. Bob was basically a big magical library; the combination of perfect recall and an insatiable curiosity for all forms of knowledge made him a darn useful tool for any magus. Unfortunately, he's also as much of a wiseass as I am. I suspect I've been a bad influence on him; back when I first pulled him from the ashes of my old master's lab, he hadn't been nearly so much of a smart-aleck. "Lemme guess, this is related to Lea busting in earlier?"

"Yeah, looks like I'm finally settling my debt with her. How'd she get through the wards, anyway?"

"Oh, she hopped right past them through the Nevernever. Opened up your portal right down here in the basement, actually."

"And you didn't think that, just maybe, you should warn me that a Sidhe had broken into my home and was about to ambush me in my sleep?"

"And piss off one of the nastiest High Sidhe in all of Winter? No thank you; I've got enough enemies back in the Nevernever as it is." The orange light issuing out of the skull flared brightly as Bob chuckled and added. "Besides, as far as I knew she could have been planning a nice surprise for you instead of an ambush. I mean, ignoring your history with her and all, you've got to admit that Lea's a total SILF."

"SILF?"

"Yeah. You know: A Sidhe I'd Like to – "

"I get the idea, Bob." I still don't understand how I wound up with a spirit of intellect that's completely sex-crazed. After all, he's a spirit of intellect, so he's physically incapable of actually participating in the act itself, and as a being a pure knowledge he shouldn't have the biological drives that mere mortals like yours truly have to deal with. Then again, maybe it was the completely unintellectual nature of sex that fascinated him so much in the first place.

"So, why're we going to Japan anyway?"

"Lea wants me to do some consulting work for some government research lab out there." I gave Bob the location of the Artificial Evolution Laboratory. "So, how close can you get me to it? Considering the fact that I know maybe half a dozen words of Japanese, I'd rather wind up halfway across town. Kind of hard to ask someone for directions when all I know is 'Kamikaze,' 'Sayonara,' and 'Domo Arigato, Mister Roboto.'"

"Well, how close I can get you is really gonna depend, Harry. How long were you planning to let me out of the skull as a reward for all my years of dedicated, selfless service I finish playing tour guide?"

"After what happened the last time I let you out? No way; I'm pretty sure those sorority girls are going to be scarred for life."

"Well gee Harry, in that case, I'm not sure I can get you to Japan after all." The lights in Bob's skull dimmed. "You know how crazy and unpredictable the Nevernever can be."

As useful as Bob is to have around, sometimes I'm really tempted to grab a hammer and smash that skull into tiny little pieces. Unfortunately, trying to actually threaten Bob into cooperation was pointless; he knew he was way too useful for me to ever get rid of him, and getting my information from another source would probably require making a bargain with a Fae or some other creature of the Nevernever, and most of them had much higher prices than Bob. Luckily, I had a compromise in mind. "How about if I buy you some Japanese porn instead, Bob?"

The skull took a moment to consider this proposition. "Only if it's the good stuff. If it doesn't have schoolgirls and tentacle monsters, then no deal."

"Schoolgirls and tentacle monsters." I agreed, feeling more than a little dirty for making the suggestion in the first place.


	3. Harry III

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

Murphy's search on the Artificial Evolution Laboratory turned up a few useful tidbits, but nothing major, and most of what I got just confirmed what I already suspected. The official public statements about what the lab did managed to make it all sound impressively vague and boring, yet the lab had major financial backing had been snatching up some of the best scientific minds in the world, and in addition to the main lab in Hakone the AEL owned several pieces of property that were apparently being developed into subsidiary labs.

Checking in with a few of my usual contacts in the Nevernever hadn't given me anything new to work with, but I hadn't expected much in the way of results there. The various creatures of the Nevernever tend to be less than perfect sources when it comes to purely mortal affairs, and most of the contacts I had developed tended to be a bit too local in outlook. Until very recently, I'd needed information about things going on in the greater Chicago area, not what was going on halfway around the world in Japan.  
That's not to say I had exhausted every possible source, just the ones that I felt comfortable dealing with. There were beings I could have conjured to get answers from if I was desperate or crazy enough, and if I really went nuts I could always dig up that coin I'd buried beneath my basement –

No. Not going there.

Once I'd gotten all the information I was likely to get on the Artificial Evolution Laboratory, I got a good night's sleep. I spent the entirety of the next day prepping myself for the journey through the Nevernever. I avoided the Nevernever on general principle for a long time thanks to the constant threat of my godmother, limiting myself at most to very short hops through it. Now that I was finally willing to go there again for a proper journey, I wanted to make absolutely sure that nothing went wrong. It would be just my luck to get squished by a random troll because now that Lea wasn't a problem right now I got overconfident and stopped being careful.

I brewed half a dozen potions, gathered up a few useful tools like my handkerchief full of sunshine and some ghost dust, and I was carrying enough cold iron to make the Wild Hunt think twice about crossing me. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when the journey went completely smoothly. Nothing bad happens to me the one time I'm actually prepared for trouble. I guess it's sort of like how it never rains when you have an umbrella, only when you don't.

As it was, the only thing that came close to a problem was my instinctual paranoia from the way Lea usually pounced on me within minutes of my entering the Nevernever. On an intellectual level I knew that I didn't need to worry about Lea and her hellhounds coming after me now that I was finally about to set things square with her, but it's hard to break the habits of a lifetime.

I hadn't spent much time in the Nevernever since the Second Impact, but from what I've heard there were some big changes. The Nevernever might be a different plane of reality, but it's still tied to our world on a symbolic level. It was because of those symbolic links that you could use the Nevernever for taking shortcuts in the first place; if you knew what you were doing, you could go into the Nevernever through a library in Chicago, walk about half a mile through the Nevernever, and come out in the stacks of a university library a couple blocks away from the Artificial Evolution Laboratory in Hakone.

Bob being a spirit of intellect, a lot of the paths he knew through the Nevernever were tied to places like libraries, museums, and universities. I wonder if spending too much time hanging around in colleges and other institutions of learning that stuck a bunch of hormonal young adults together with no parental supervision was how he got so curious about sex in the first place?

Needless to say, I got plenty of odd looks as I walked out the library and down the street towards the AEL. I was used to it; between the black leather duster my staff, and all the other bits of wizarding paraphernalia I'd gotten plenty of people staring at me back in Chicago too. The only difference now was that on top of how weird I looked in general, I was also a foreigner. Then again, for all I knew I might be leaving a bunch of Japanese folks with the impression that all Americans dressed like me.

In any case, it only took me a minute to walk to the Artificial Evolution Laboratory. The lab building itself looked entirely too ordinary for all the gravitas this facility was supposed to have. I mean, it looked like a nice research facility and all, but it didn't particularly stand out. If I hadn't known just how important it was, I probably wouldn't have thought it was anything special. Of course, if this organization was trying to stay under the radar, that's exactly what they would want their facilities to look like.

Before walking through the door, I found an out-of-the-way bit of sidewalk, and drew a quick circle around myself with a piece chalk, then invested it with a measure of my will to empower it. The circle was an important part of any delicate spellcasting, since it would block out any little bits of random magical interference. Actually drawing out the circle wasn't necessary to cast a magic spell, envisioning it in your mind could work just as well, but having an actual physical circle was better when you had the time for it and want that extra bit of certainly and precision.

Once I felt like I had the magic suppression spell well in hand, I broke the circle with a tiny push of will before smudging the chalk outline with a foot. Considering the fact that this was a research lab, odds were pretty good that there was some high-tech equipment there. With any luck the suppression spell should keep me from burning out someone's computer or ruining any specialized equipment. Well, so long as I didn't get distracted. Or get too emotional. Or have to actually sling any actual magic around. Or … well, you get the idea.

Luckily for me, since the Artificial Evolution Laboratory was a UN-backed organization the bored-looking receptionist in the lobby spoke enough English for me to communicate who I was and why I was there. A quick look around also confirmed that pretty much everything, from the building directory to the signs over the bathrooms, were in both English and Japanese, and it was likely a decent amount of the staff was bilingual. Having first Britain and then the US as top dog in the world put English as the closest thing we had to an international language, so hopefully my complete ignorance of Japanese wouldn't be as much of a problem as I'd feared.

Of course, it figured that the one thing that wasn't in English was the collection of pamphlets and old magazines that were there for people to read while they waited. Since I didn't really have anything better to do while I was waiting for Yui Ikari, I contented myself with idly flipping through the Japanese magazines and making up silly captions for all the pictures.

I was halfway through making up an elaborate tale about Farmer Joe Japanman and his harem of chicken wives (which was probably far more interesting than the real article about poultry farming) when the same voice I'd heard over the telephone the other day. "Mr. Dresden, I presume?"

Yui Ikari was younger than I'd expected. After all, she was presumably pretty high on the food chain here, and probably had scientific degrees in advanced fields I had never even heard of before. However, instead of the matronly old scientist I'd been expecting she was on the younger side of thirty, and she looked good enough in a lab coat that I was vaguely disappointed to see a wedding ring.

I'm a guy. I notice these things. So sue me.

I had to briefly squash the urge to say something smartassy in response to her question. I might enjoy being a wiseass more than was strictly necessary, but when I'm dealing with a new client it's important to make a good first impression. Besides, Ikari seemed to have a solid grasp of English, but snark and sarcasm are always trickier to deal with when they're not in your native language. Also, I'm kind of an old-fashioned guy; I believe in being polite to the ladies. "Yes ma'am. Harry Dresden, pleasure to make you acquaintance." I extended my hand.

Judging by the slight smile she wore as she shook my hand, I think my effort to be a gentleman made a good impression. Not all women react well to an old-fashioned gentleman; some of them seem to think that old-fashioned gentlemanly conduct goes along with old fashioned ideas about how women should spend all their time barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. I might be a bit old fashioned, but I'm not a caveman. "Very well, Mr. Dresden this should be a relatively simple affair; I simply want to know if you can offer any additional insight into our current project. If you'll follow me."

"Sure." I dutifully trailed followed behind my newest client. "So, now can you tell me what you're working on here?"

"I'm afraid that the details of Project E are only available on what you call a 'need to know' basis. However, I can tell you that what we're currently analyzing is a field effect. So far, conventional scientific methods have not produced the results we hoped for, so we've decided to look into some unconventional possibilities."

Well, that didn't give me much to go on. Then again, keeping me out of the loop meant I might not get sucked into whatever was going on here; I could just come in, do a quick consulting job, and leave.

Yeah, right. My life has never been that simple. Lea wouldn't trade off the debt she'd been holding over my head for half my life for a small favor. Whatever was going to happen here, it was almost certainly going to be big and nasty, and my odds of just spending a couple hours doing normal consulting work and then going home with a nice paycheck with no further repercussions were pretty much nil. I just hoped that whenever the other shoe finally got around to falling, it didn't land on my head and squish me flat.

The nondescript hallways we passed though seemed just a bit to determinedly ordinary to really seem authentic; every office door was shut tight, and every single door was completely standard; there was not a single door a goofy comic or a newspaper article posted on it or any other of the various personal touches you expect in an actual working research lab. It was empty. Lifeless. A good-looking face to present the public, but this wasn't where they did the real research.

Ikari led me to some sort of train cart, and the fact that all the windows were blacked out caught my attention. I took a moment to make sure that my magic suppression spell was still in working order; trains are usually base on old enough technology that they don't have a serious problem getting along with magic, but then most of my experience was with the less than modern US railroads, and taking unnecessary risks had lost its appeal a long time ago.

Ikari and I took a seat on one of the benches, and after a moment she produced several sheets of paper from within her lab coat. "Our standard nondisclosure forms, Mr. Dresden."

I took the time to read through all the standard legal boilerplate on the forms; once you get screwed over by cutting an ill-considered deal with a Fae, you learn your lesson about signing a form or making any other type of agreement without reading the fine print first. Plus, actually reading the entire big long complicated legal document someone asks you to sign is usually a really good way to annoy them; I swear, some lawyers must deliberately make their contracts as long and wordy as possible on the assumption that nobody would have enough stubborn endurance to actually read the whole thing.

If that was the case, then those lawyers never had to deal with someone as thick-headed as me before, because I read every single word before I put pen to paper and signed my name. At least they didn't try any cheap tricks like leaving me a bunch of untranslated Japanese; every single word of the document was in plain English legalese. Everything looked like pretty standard "don't tell anyone what's in the secret government lab" agreement without any nasty hidden sub-clauses or the like. Then again, if this was one of those secret evil government labs that killed you if you told anybody what you saw there, that probably wouldn't be included in the legal documentation.

Since the windows were blacked out I had no idea where we were going, but I could tell from the motion of the train that we were probably going underground. Not surprising, really; everyone knows that secret government labs have to be buried underground. Aside from making it that much easier to do whatever it was they were doing away from the public eye, it also made it a lot easier to contain the situation when something went wrong. I just hope this wasn't one of those labs that experimented on aliens. Or monkeys. Or alien monkeys.

Since I was done filling out the nondisclosure forms, I decided to fish for information in the guise of making small talk. "So, Dr. Ikari, why hire me? I mean, if you needed a paranormal consultant why not hire somebody a bit more local?"

"We did. Their results were unsatisfactory." Ikari glanced in my direction, and I noticed a slight smile on her face. "When local experts produced no results, we broadened our search parameters. You have worked with government institutions before, and have a proven reputation for competence, discretion and integrity."

Now I had to wonder just where she was getting her information from. I mean, I'm sure Murphy and some of my other repeat customers have a high opinion of my abilities, but for the most part the world thinks I'm a fraud, because everyone knows there's no such thing as magic. Of course, a secret government conspiracy lab like this could probably get access to Murphy's official reports and case files from the Chicago PD, and other information the general public wouldn't have access to, and hiring a paranormal consultant tends to go along with the implicit assumption that not all of them are fakes.

A minute later the train finally arrived at its destination. Once it had come to a complete stop, the doors opened to reveal a complex that was obviously still in the later part of the construction phase. The lights and some of the wiring were still exposed, the walls were unpainted, and unopened boxes of equipment decorated the area. I was pleased to note that we'd gotten past the false front, and into the area where the actual work was getting done. That was when I hear the last thing I expected to encounter in a secret underground government lab.

The kid couldn't have been more than two years old, and the resemblance to Yui Ikari was close enough that I could guess whose child he was. The child quickly ran up to Ikari with a bright smile on his face, eagerly babbling away in Japanese. Yui gave me a quick apologetic look, and then squatted down to the kid's level and responded in the same language. I might not understand Japanese, but I had enough experience with parents and children to let me make a pretty good guess at what they were saying.

"Mommy! Mommy! Look at me! Look at me!"

"That's very good sweetie, but mommy has to work right now…"

Then the kid noticed there was someone else in the room besides his mother, and started staring at me with a mixture of fear and fascination. I put on my best kid-friendly grin. "Well hello there, little man."

Apparently my best kid-friendly grin wasn't good enough, since the kid immediately ran back behind his mother, though he was still curious enough about me to peek out at me from behind the safety of his mommy-shield. I guess he was a bit shier than Michael's kids, or maybe the fact that I was a foreigner made me a bit scarier than usual.

Ikari glanced back at her child, and this time I picked out my name among the string of Japanese she spoke. She then turned back to me. "Mr. Dresden, this is my son, Shinji."

Shinji nervously took a half-step from behind his mother's back, and then gave a nervous bow and declared. "Hajimemashite, Dresden-san."

I knew -san from watching the Karate Kid movies, and from the context I could make a reasonable guess that the first word was some sort of standard polite greeting. I repeated the greeting back to the child, and judging by the giggle I got out of the kid I'd mangled the pronunciation badly enough to amuse him. The child grinned, and repeated the word, this time drawing out each syllable to make the pronunciation obvious. When I dutifully repeated the word back to him, I earned a bright approving smile. "Domo arigato, sensei." (Hell's bells, I'd actually managed a coherent sentence of Japanese based entirely on pop-cultural osmosis). That got another giggle out of the kid, presumably over the absurdity of a two-year-old teaching an adult to speak properly.

Shinji and Yui exchanged a few more words of Japanese, which I chose to believe consisted of the kid declaring that I was awesome and he wanted to grow up to be just like me, and his mother agreeing that this would be an excellent idea. Of course, given the way Shinji trundled off afterwards, she had probably just sent him to go play somewhere else instead. Yui stared after her son's retreating form for a few moments, a smile on her face, and then returned to a standing position and faced me. "I apologize for the interruption; it seems that my son had become bored with staying in his father's office."

"It's fine." I was a little curious about why they were keeping the kid in their workplace instead of checking him into a daycare center of getting a family member or friend to keep an eye on him, but I'm not in any position to tell someone how to raise their children. "He's a good kid."

"Thank you." Yui was silent for a few moments, while she presumably shifted mental gears from mother-mode to business-mode. "Now then Mr. Dresden, shall we continue? It is not much further."

True to her words, within a minute we arrived at an office of some sort, whose only notable features were a computer desk and a large window that opened out onto a pitch-black room. Naturally, I stayed as far away from the computer as I could; suppression spell or not, I wasn't going to take chances. Yui went up to the computer and messed around with it for a bit (me being completely computer-illiterate, I couldn't really tell what she was doing) before addressing me. "We should be starting within a few minutes, Mr. Dresden. I will need to go elsewhere in order to finish activating the field; you should be able to observe through the window. Do you have any final questions before we begin?"

"I've got bunches of them, but I'm pretty sure most of them wouldn't get answered; need-to-know basis and all that." I still wasn't sure what I was in for, but since I was only going to be able to look through a window at whatever it was they wanted me to study, I'd probably need to either use my Sight or take Bob out and get his opinion on the matter. Maybe both. "I will at least have some privacy while I work, right?"

"Of course, Mr. Dresden. I believe there is a saying that a magician never reveals his tricks."

Once Yui left the room, I quickly scanned the area and spotted the two security cameras. A quiet "Hexus" fried both of them, just to make sure I wasn't being spied on. There might still be a hidden camera somewhere, but the only way to knock that out for sure would be to leak enough magical power out to fry any nearby electronics, which could cause way too many problems in a research lab like this. As it was, the room's computer went to a solid blue screen with white text on it, and I'd seen that screen enough times to know it was bad news. Luckily, I managed to get my suppression spell re-centered before I completely fried the computer, so it was only mostly dead.

Now that I could operate in relative privacy, I dug Bob out of one of the large pockets of my duster, and set the skull down in a position where it would have a good view out of the window. "Rise and shine, sleepyhead; it's time to earn our paycheck." When Bob was slow on the uptake, I resorted to the dirtiest trick in my arsenal to goad him into actions. "Heads up, Bob. Come on lazybones. If you don't work you won't get ahead. I need you take on this, even if it is over your head."

"Alright, alright, enough with the puns!" Bob's headlights kindled to life in the skull. "You know Harry, most people say that puns are the lowest form of humor."

"Sorry Bob." I'm sure I sounded completely sincere and apologetic. "It's just, sometimes, you really let all that knowledge you get from being a spirit of intellect go to your head."

Bob let out a disgusted groan. "Hey Harry, you wanted to know why I didn't warn you when Lea broke in? It's because of stuff like this."

"For someone who's as much of a smartass as you are, you really can't handle it when someone else starts dishing it out, can you? I guess you're just too big-headed for it."

"Being a wiseass is one thing, puns are another. Now do you wanna get down to business, or would you rather torture me to death with more of your so-called humor? "

I pondered the matter for a moment. "Both options are tempting…" I fished into one of my pockets and pulled out a quarter. "I'll flip for it; if it lands on heads, then I keep making puns."

Judging from the exasperated growl Bob let out, I'd just about pushed him to the breaking point. Before I could come up with just one more bad head pun to drive him into a complete meltdown, a flickering, shimmering energy discharge suddenly dominated our view out the window. It only lasted a brief second before dying out, though after about a minute or so it flickered back to life for another moment of time.

The light provided by the field was too brief for me to actually get a good look at what was in the room, but I saw a few brief flickers of a vast shape hidden in the darkness. I could get a good look at it by turning on my Sight, but that can be a risky proposition. The Sight lets me see things as they really are, not just the outward appearance but a true understanding of the nature of whatever it is you're looking at. The thing is, anything that you see with your Sight stays with you for the rest of your life, so if you see something really unpleasant the memories of it can never be forgotten, or even dull with the passage of time. There were things out there that could break your mind if you Saw them, and even more ordinary nastiness could wear on you after a while. Considering the risks that go along with it, I don't like to use my Sight without a really good reason, especially not when I know I'll be looking at some sort of unidentified supernatural thing.

"Harry, what are these people doing?" Bob didn't exactly sound scared, but he was definitely taken pretty badly aback by whatever he could see. "This field thing they want us to look at … it's kinda like Soulfire."

"Soulfire?"

"Yeah. It's what angels use to do stuff. Remember the Hellfire the Denarians used?" I winced at the memory; my encounter with the demonic order was probably one of the nastiest things that had ever happened to me in my life. "Well, Soulfire's like that, except less demonic. More flexible too; Hellfire's really only good for smashing stuff up."

"So they've replicated some sort of angelic power source?"

"Nah, I said it was like Soulfire, not actual Soulfire. It's … like they somehow managed to turn the soul into a shield or something; instead of being contained within the body, it's being projected outward and used to establish a barrier between the person and everything else. That's," Bob fell silent for a moment, and when he resumed speaking he sounded rather subdued. "Harry, I've never even heard of someone doing something like that before."

"Anything else you can tell me, Bob?" At least now the Faerie Courts getting involved made a bit more sense. If this lab was doing some really freaky research involving weaponized souls, it would be the sort of thing that might make people in the supernatural world take notice.

"Yeah, one other thing. The … the thing they've got projecting the field. It's an empty shell, no real soul in it, just a few random bits of ambient energy. That's why the field only lasts for a fraction of a second every time it comes on. If they wanted to make it work reliably, they'll need a proper soul involved somewhere in the process."

"What is projecting the field anyway?"

If such a thing were possible, I get the feeling Bob would have shuddered. "You don't want to know Harry. Trust me on this. Don't look at it with your Sight, either." Bob fell silent again for a time, and then declared. "So what are you going to do now Harry? Tell the mad scientists more about how to turn souls into deflector shields and superweapons, then take paycheck and go home?"

Bob's question wasn't as sarcastic as a lot of people would expect; being a spirit of intellect meant Bob wasn't exactly bothered by things like morality and free will. Granted, as a spirit of intellect he could probably teach me a dozen different moral/ethical theories as well as a college philosophy professor, but when it came to actual practical applications of morality he just didn't get it. It's not that Bob was evil; it's just that on a fundamental level he didn't understand the concepts of good and evil. He had helped my old master, a dark wizard who regularly broke the laws of magic and tried to turn me into a mind-controlled slave, just as readily as he helped me.

I was still trying to figure what my next move should be when the demonstration ended and Yui returned, a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other. "Well, Mr. Dresden, what can you tell me about the AT Field?"

"Quite a bit." I crossed my arms over my chest and hit the woman with a scowl. "What I'm not clear on is whether or not I should tell you anything. Do you have any idea what you're doing? The soul is not something you should screw around with."

If anything I said surprised Yui, she didn't show it; she just made a few notes on her clipboard as if I had given her a perfectly normal answer instead of a demi-rant. "What would it take to persuade you to share your insights with me, Mr. Dresden?"

I was tempted to say that I didn't want anything to do with whatever abomination this lab was cooking up, but I was pretty sure that wouldn't go over well. Also, if I was entirely honest with myself, I was a bit curious about what was going on here. Now that I knew part of the story I wanted to know the rest; I couldn't just walk away and pretend none of this had happened. Besides, Lea's involvement was more than enough to confirm that, whatever was going on here, it was big. So, instead of walking away, I gave her an answer. "Information. Right now, all I know is that you're doing some really freaky research. Tell me the whole story, and maybe I won't be so worried about telling you how to get this AT Field of yours up and running."

That caught Yui's attention. "You have a solution to the power problems we are experiencing with the AT Field?" She fell silent for almost half a minute, no doubt weighing the benefits of the knowledge I could offer against the risks of letting me in on their big secrets. "Mr. Dresden, I hope you understand the gravity of your request. If I tell you the truth about our work here it will change your life forever. Simply finishing this consultation, collecting your paycheck and going back to America to live a normal life will no longer be an option for you. For security reasons, you would have to become an employee of the Artificial Evolution Laboratory. If you want to walk away, this is your last chance."

The speech was just a touch too well-prepared to be spontaneous, especially considering the fact that it wasn't even in her native language. The truth hit me like a ton of bricks. "Stars and stones, this was never a simple consultation, was it? It's a freaking job interview."

Yui nodded. "As you have no doubt already concluded, our laboratory is heavily involved in researching things outside the boundaries of traditional science. Having someone who specializes in mysticism on our research staff is a logical measure. Will you accept the job, Mr. Dresden?"

So, in the end it boiled down to picking the red pill or the blue pill. Of course, it really wasn't that simple; when a secret government-run lab offers you a job, you can't just walk away and have that be the end of it; at the very least, I would probably spend the rest of my life on some UN watchlist to make sure I didn't blab about what I already knew. At worst, refusing the job meant I would suffer a convenient car accident, die in a tragic mugging-gone-wrong, or just mysteriously vanish off the face of the planet.

That's not to mention that Lea had obviously set me up to get offered this job, which meant that she was likely to be rather peeved if I said no. At least now I'd figured out the hidden trap behind her too-good-to-be-true deal to pay off the debt I owed her.

On top of the fact that saying no probably wasn't nearly as much of an option as you would think from the first glance, I have to admit that even if it were a viable choice, I might not have taken it. Simple truth is, I get mixed up in a lot of the trouble because that's my nature. I wanted to find out what was really hidden behind the curtain. Whatever this was, it was big, quite possibly the sort of thing that could change the entire world. Even if it meant getting myself into all kinds of trouble in the process, a part of me wanted to be able to say that I was there, to know that I had played a part in making history.

"Yeah, I'll take the job." I knew too much to turn away now. I wanted answers. I wanted the truth.

I just hope I can handle it.

Judging by her smile, Yui approved of my choice. "Welcome to Gehirn, Mr. Dresden."

"Harry. If we're going to be working together, you can call me Harry."

Another smile and a slight inclination of her head in acknowledgment of my request. "Very well then Harry. Now, I believe we should start with the true cause of the Second Impact…"


	4. Harry IV

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

It was surprising how little my life changed immediately after I became the official consultant on supernatural affairs to the Artificial Evolution Laboratory, or more specifically Gehirn, the organization behind the lab. Gehirn only called me for consultation once or twice a month, and thanks to being able to make a hop through the Nevernever in the time it took most people to commute from the suburbs, I could still live in Chicago, and just make the journey to Hakone whenever they needed my take on something. Really, compared to the shock of when I got dragged into the White Court's internal politics and found out about my vampire half-brother, joining Gehirn wasn't that big of a deal.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the arrangement; Gehirn gave me steady work, but not so much that I couldn't keep my wizard-for-hire business going, and the paycheck Gehirn sent me was generous enough that I almost felt guilty about taking the money. Then again, the guilt might have been because a big part of the check was probably meant to encourage me not to blab about all the secrets I knew now. The truth about how the Angels caused the Second Impact instead of a meteor. The huge risk we'd be facing the Third Impact in a decade's time when the rest of the Angels showed up. Evangelion, the best hope we had of actually stopping the Angels from finishing us off.

Still, I was adjusting to my new reality. I'd carried my share of difficult and dangerous secrets before, and I understood why the truth had to be hidden in this case. If the truth had come out and people really knew that there was a very real risk that the Third Impact would happen, there would be mass panic, and all sorts of crazies would come out of the woodwork to cause trouble. Not only that, every single person with a shred of influence would want to get involved with the efforts to stop the Third Impact from happening and how we absolutely had to do things their way. Stopping the end of the world and ensuring the survival of the human race was to important to get bogged down in political bullshit.

That was why I hadn't told the White Council anything; I wasn't about to share the truth with them, because I was pretty sure they'd start butting in on Gehirn's work. I'd considered at least sharing the truth with Ebenezer, but before I got a chance to do so we had a run in with a scourge of Black Court vamps, and afterwards I'd learned some unpleasant truths about the man who I'd always seen as my moral touchstone.

I'd like to say that finding out about Ebenezar's position as Blackstaff, the one wizard on the Council allowed to break every single Law of Magic in the name of the greater good, made me reconsider the moral implications of sharing dark secrets with him. I'd like to say that not sharing the truth with him was a carefully considered and rational decision. In all honesty though, I think a big part of it was just me lashing out at him and scoring a type of petty revenge; he'd kept a big secret from me for so many years, so I decided to keep my secrets from him too.

Despite the burden of keeping Gehirn's secrets, I was actually not that concerned about my decision to throw my lot in with organization. I admit their methods could be a shady at times, and I knew there were still a few things I was being kept in the dark about, but ultimately the prevention of the Third Impact was so important that my involvement was satisfying. I admit, being told you were going to help save the world was a nice boost to the ego.

It wasn't until a year after a joined Gehirn that I regretted my decision for the first time. To be fair, there was no way I could have known just how Yui would use the information I gave her about the Evangelions and the AT Field. There was no way I could possibly be held to blame for what happened, and as much as I hated the course events took, I knew that every decision taken along the way had been right. Sacrifices had to be made in order the stop the Third Impact.

However much I told myself that was true, I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for my role in taking Shinji's mother away from him.

* * *

I should have known something was wrong when it wasn't Yui who called me in to Gehirn headquarters. It's not that I didn't get along with the other people working at Gehirn, it's just that Yui and I had the best working relationship, and she was almost always the one to call me in when they needed my take on the odd combination of science and mysticism they were using to make the Evangelions work.

Aside from Yui, there were three other major players at Gehirn. First there was her husband, Gendo Ikari. The man was quiet, kept to himself, and seemed more involved in the administration and political side of things than the actual research. He was also cold enough to make me a bit wary of him; I knew Gehirn had a bit of a ruthless streak when it came to fulfilling its mission, and I'm pretty sure that ruthless streak came from Gendo. I can't entirely fault him for making the hard choices that are necessary to save the world, but you always need to be a bit wary of people who are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals, because 'whatever it takes' can often include stepping on you or anyone else who gets in their way.

Then there was Naoko Akagi. I didn't really know her all that well, which figured since she was Gehirn's main tech-head and a computer specialist. My suppression spell might have kept me from blowing up computers just by looking at them, but it wasn't perfect by a long shot. I still generally played it safe when it came to high-tech stuff, which meant I never had many opportunities to get to know a woman who spent 95% of her time at the Gehirn facilities behind a computer.

Lastly, there was Gehirn's second in command, Kozo Fuyutsuki. Aside from Yui, he was probably the guy I got along with best, just because I think we were both relatively decent men who'd been dragged into this mess. The man was an old college professor who mainly seemed to be here because Yui had been one of his doctoral students, and despite his frequent misgivings about how Gehirn, and later Nerv, did business he stuck around because stopping the Third Impact was just that important. That gave us something in common. It Fuyutsukik who called me in that day.

When I arrived at the lab in Hakone, it didn't take me long to notice that everyone there was a lot quieter than normal. There was almost no ambient conversation, and what little there was seemed to be carried on in soft whispers. I would have asked one of the employees what the problem was, but although I'd made a few efforts at learning some Japanese over the last year now that I was doing a fair bit of work in Japan, but all I'd really managed was a few basic conversational tidbits like being able to ask someone where the bathroom was. I used to think that my poor grasp of Latin, official language of the White Council, was mostly due to taking a low-quality correspondence course in the language. Now, I was starting to think I just had no talent for languages.

It probably didn't help that that the top Gehirn staff all had a reasonable working knowledge of English. After all, they were scientists, and English had been the unofficial language of the international scientific community for decades. Yui and Fuyutsuki were both reasonably fluent in the language. Gendo was trickier to figure out, since he was one of those guys who saw spoken words as an incredibly precious resource that should never be used needlessly. Maybe he rarely spoke more than half a dozen words to me because that was all the English he knew, or maybe he could speak perfect English, but he was just that anti-social.

I was only waiting for about half a minute when Fuyutsuki met me. "Mr. Dresden." He looked like he had aged a decade since the last time I'd seen him a month ago, his back and shoulders hunched as if he were being crushed down by some massive weight.

"Fuyutsuki." I'm normally not big on formality, but the Japanese are, and while I'm a wiseass, I don't want to go out of my way to annoy the people I've been working with on an off-and-on basis for a year. Well, unless they annoyed me first. Or I came up with a bit of snark that was just too good to leave unused. Or … well, you get the idea. Besides, not being native English speakers or being familiar with American pop-culture meant that a lot of my smartassery went over their heads anyway.

"Mr. Dresden, there has been –" The man fell silent for a moment. "That is to say –" Fuyutsuki cut himself off again and let out a pained sigh. and passed a manila folder over to me. "Perhaps it would be best if you just read the report yourself."

With no small amount of dread at the thought of what could possibly have unsettled the man so, and by the time I hit the third paragraph of the enclosed report I was probably in as bad of a state as he was.

Yui Ikari was gone. There had been contact experiment two days ago, the synchro rate spiked, plug depth went out of control, and when they finally recovered her entry plug all that was left was a bit of extra LCL and her empty clothes.

When Fuyutsuki returned a few minutes later, I made a point of not noticing that his eyes seemed a little redder than usual. The British might be the ones who are famous for keeping a stiff upper lip, but the Japanese could probably give them a run for their money in that category. I knew he'd been close with Yui; he'd been her advisor when she wrote her dissertation after all, though I suspected that in the secret corners of his heart he had thought of Yui as more than just one of his favorite students.

"So … damn." I'd never been all that good with these sorts of situations. Knowing what to say to someone who had just lost a loved one. I guess it's because there's not really anything you can say; it's not like there are some magic words that will make the pain go away. The only cure is time; it never stops hurting, but after a few years you learn to live with the pain. "I guess you want me down in the cages, seeing what I can do."

"Yes." Fuyutsuki took a deep breath and forced himself to stand up a little straighter. "We have not given up hope yet." The palpable aura of despair hanging over the entire facility put the lie to his words, but I wasn't about to disagree with him.

The journey down to the cages occurred in painful silence, made all the awkward when Fuyutsuki's cell phone died noisily about a minute in. Like I mentioned before, my suppression spell really starts slipping if I get emotional, and I won't deny that Yui's apparent death had me pretty bummed out. I couldn't help thinking about her kid, and wondering how he would he deal with the fact that his mommy was never coming home again. I know what it's like to lose a parent at that age; at least Shinji still had a father, so he wasn't a complete orphan.

On the other hand, Gendo Ikari didn't exactly strike me as the sort of man who would know how to comfort a grieving child.

Evangelion Test Unit 01 was still in the early stages of construction. Pretty much all they had done was the head and enough of the torso to hold an entry plug. Until all the issues with synching, control over the Evangelion, and AT Fields were sorted out, there was no point in adding anything else.

I hadn't expected to get the answers about what happened to Yui as quickly as I did, but when I walked into the cages, I did something that should have been harmless. I looked at the Evangelion's eyes.

Before I even realized what was happening, I was drawn into a soul gaze.

You know that old saying about how the eyes are the window into the soul? Well, for wizards it's literally true. If a wizard looks you directly in the eyes, it can initiate what we call a soul gaze; it allows you to see a person's innermost being, the very essence of who they are. It's a two-way thing though; not only do you see them, but they see you too. Also, since the soul gaze seems to be related to the Wizard's Sight, it means you can never forget what you see when you soul gaze a person, and not everyone's soul was pleasant to look at.

Of course, as the name implies, soul gazes are only an issue when you're dealing with something that actually has a soul. As a general rule, if you hadn't been born as an ordinary mortal human or a wizard, you didn't have a soul, which excluded a whole lot of supernatural entities, from low-level critters to High Sidhe like Lea.

And, until that day, the Evangelions.

As soon as the soul gaze was over, two horrifying facts sank in.

1) Yui Ikari's soul was now trapped in Unit 01.

2) Yui Ikari's soul was there because she wanted it to be there. This was no tragic accident; she had stepped into the entry plug knowing that the Evangelion would consume her.

The worst thing was, with the benefit of hindsight, the reasoning behind her decision was obvious. A big part of my work over the last year or so with Gehirn had involved working on establishing a connection between pilot and Evangelion so we could generate a proper AT Field. Since the Evangelions had no souls of their own, you needed a pilot with a nice juicy soul to actually power the AT Field. Since most of the research and educated guesses Gehirn had come up with said that the AT Field was going to be the key to stopping the Angels, getting the AT Field up and running was one of our top priorities.

The big problem we'd been having was, souls are tricky and incredibly dangerous things to work with, especially with an Evangelion. After all, you were basically taking your bits of the pilot's soul, and then filtering it through the soulless Eva in order to project the field. It was a horribly inefficient way of doing things, and a lot of energy got wasted in the process, and we hadn't been able to get nearly good enough results from our AT Field experiments.

On top of that, it was incredibly dangerous for the pilots themselves. The Evangelions were alive, but soulless, and even in the magical world nature abhors a vacuum. So, not only was the process for creating an At Field horribly inefficient because so much soul energy was lost trying to filter the pilot's soul through the Evangelion, but we also had to manage the synchronization between Eva and pilot very carefully, or the Eva would eat the pilot's soul.

I'd like to say that it never occurred to me that you could solve the first problem by ignoring the second one. That if you let the Evangelion consume a pilot's soul, then that soul could power the AT Field without any of the inefficiency issues that came from trying to transfer small amounts of tightly controlled soul between pilot and Eva. However, I've never been entirely sure if the idea never occurred to me, or if I just subconsciously blocked it out. After all, if I admitted that letting an Eva eat someone's soul would make the AT Field work, it would lead to the conclusion that it had to be done.

The worst part was that we did it again. It was more than a year later, and we put a huge amount of effort into finding a way to empower the Evangelion without losing the subject in the contact experiment. I test subject survived the experience and the Evangelion got a functioning soul to run its AT Field, so I suppose you could say we succeeded.

Personally, I don't think driving Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu insane to the point where she killed herself in front of her four-year-old daughter was much of a success.

Maybe if I'd never gotten to know the kids later on it would've been easier to live with the sacrifices we made to create the Evangelions. After all, Kyoko and Yui knew what would happen when they got in their Evangelions. What they did was noble, and more than that it was necessary. It all boils down to the old idea of the Greater Good. To steal a line form Spock, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. Sacrificing a single person to save the entire world from the Third Impact was too logical a course to make any other choice. It was the right thing to do.

Yeah. Try telling that to the two kids who didn't have a mother any more.

* * *

Over the six years following Yui Ikari's death, my role in Gehirn had gradually expanded beyond my initial job description as a simple technical consultant. Over time, Gendo and Fuyutsuki had come to realize that there were some tasks where magic could be an incredibly useful tool for them. The Ways through the Nevernever not only let me hop around the world quite a bit faster than even the best mortal technology could manage, it also gave a method of transportation that was effectively invisible to normal means of surveillance.

I still didn't know the full story behind Seele, but between what Gendo and Fuyutsuki let slip and what I was able to dig up on my own, I'd put together a reasonable amount of information. Seele were the men and women behind Gehirn. Rich, powerful, influential, and secretive. I also knew they had an agenda beyond stopping the Third Impact. What that agenda was I still had no idea, but I could take a pretty good guess at it. Most people with lots of money and power don't get it by accident; they obtain it because they feel a constant need for more money and power. Seele wanted to make sure that the Angels and Third Impact were stopped in a way that left Seele sitting on top of the pile. I'm reminded of a saying about how 'Crisis' and 'Opportunity' are the same word in Chinese.

So, I'd taken to performing the occasional odd job intended to stay under Seele's radar. Fuyutsuki also started consulting me on the issues that weren't strictly related to Project E. The biggest surprise had been when he gave me a piece of paper with a very big number on it, and told me that was the budget I had to make the main Gehirn facility impregnable to any form of magical attack or surveillance. There was only so much I could do, especially since the wards had to be very carefully placed and crafted to avoid any issues with how they would interact with all the high-tech gear within headquarters itself, but all-in-all I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

My wards wouldn't stop a determined attack by a Senior Council member or a war party of Wardens, but I'm pretty sure that outside of the top level of the White Council and the other supernatural heavy-hitters nobody could get through. Not having to deal with two-bit conjurer who had more curiosity than sense taking a peek at our base, or some random lunatic dark wizard deciding to open a portal in the middle of headquarters gave us a few less things to worry about.

Once the wards were done, I'd floated another idea past the two men who effectively ran Gehirn, and soon enough there was entire room of Gehirn HQ occupied by a constantly growing and evolving construct I'd dubbed Little Tokyo-3. Compared to the cost of converting Hakone into the fortress city of Tokyo-3, creating a perfect scale model of the city was nothing, and getting pieces of all the buildings, streets, and other major fixtures of the city was simplicity itself when the city was still in the process of being built.

Under the guise of an ordinary medical exam, Gendo also arranged for me to get hair samples of e very single person working for Gehirn, from the guy who cleans out the toilets to Gendo himself. Hair, blood, and other bits of the human body could be used as a link to connect a spell to the person they belonged to; with the samples, I could do anything from a simple tracking spell to some really nasty dark magic. Yeah, it was a little 1984 to have the material for tracking spells on every single employee on the base, but there were a lot of times when it came in quite handy, even for relatively mundane tasks like finding someone who got lost in the base's extensive corridors.

Big Brother Dresden is watching you.

Out of all the odd jobs I'd done, the strangest of the lot had to be my involvement in the creation of the Vatican Treaty. If anyone had told me seven years ago that I was going to be involved in high-level diplomatic negotiations centered around the creation of one of the most important legal documents on the twenty-first century, I would've laughed my ass off. As anyone who's spent more than five minutes with me can tell you, diplomacy is not my strong suit, and while I'm not short-tempered or anything, when I get pissed off I get REALLY pissed off.

The entire organization was in the process of being retooled from the strictly research group intended to study the angels and the principles behind the Evangelion to a combined research/paramilitary group tasked with fighting the coming invasion of the Angels.

On the other hand, it's not like I was involved in the actual diplomacy and negotiations. As anyone with experience in the matter knows, a diplomatic conference is mostly about the backroom backstabbing, no the actual public discussions in front of the cameras, full of flowery language and grand assurances. When it came to backroom backstabbing, I had a couple big assets to bring to the table.

First off, I had a pretty good rep with the Vatican; after all,, I had saved the Shroud of Turin from the Denarians a while back, and I'd spent a fair amount of time working with the Knights of the Cross and other agents of the big man upstairs. Obviously none of that would ever be officially acknowledged in any way, but the important people still knew about it. Just by being publicly associated with Gehirn, it gave them a little bit extra legitimacy. While the Pope was really just the host and mediator of the negotiations surrounding the Vatican treaty, and thus couldn't do something like completely re-write the treaty in our favor, we did get one or two tidbits. One or two anonymous sources gave us some useful bits of information, and when the Pope actually had to break out the mediation stick we probably got a little boost from the fact that every time he looked over at the Gehirn table he thought 'Oh yeah, there's that guy who saved the Shroud of Turin.'

The second thing I brought to the table was the double-whammy of information gathering and information denial. Obviously, I couldn't do anything too serious when it came to poking around for info in the Vatican without drawing down the Wrath of God (possibly in an entirely too literal sense), but relatively unobtrusive things like having Toot-toot and the rest of Little Folk do some low-level espionage seemed reasonably kosher. Toot-toot wasn't the best source for diplomatic espionage, given the short attention spans of the Little Folk and their general inability to grasp the complexities of human society, but he still brought in the occasional nugget of intel. Of course, in between my magical spying, I made sure nobody else was doing the same thing to us.

The last asset was one I felt more than a little uncomfortable about, given the exact origins of the ability. Naturally, a huge international diplomatic conference is going to involve a lot of different spoken languages. While all the official business was in English, I'm sure you remember what I said about how much the official diplomacy was worth. When it came to backroom backstabbing, that usually happened in whatever language was most convenient and hardest to understand; listening in on a conversation didn't do much good if you couldn't understand a word they were saying. This made the fact that a few years back I had acquired the ability to speak and understand pretty much every language ever pretty darn handy.

The problem was, technically I wasn't an omniglot at all; the only languages I really spoke were English, Bad Latin, and So-Bad-Its-Incomprehensible Japanese.

The Fallen Angel who lived inside my head, on the other hand…

I guess I should explain. Remember that Denarian coin I'd picked a while back after my run-in with Nicodemus and his lot? Turns out, I hadn't gotten away from that experience as cleanly as I thought. While Lasciel's coin was still perfectly contained, in the basement of my Chicago apartment, in the brief time I held the coin the Fallen within it had managed to imprint an image of herself onto a my brain.

After a couple years, the image of Lasciel had gotten her act together enough to actually manifest within my mind. There had been warning signs that I hadn't fully escaped the coin's influence before then, like the fact that a few of my combat spells were getting supercharged with Hellfire, but finding out I had a full-blown simulacrum of a Fallen Angel in my head was still pretty jarring. It probably didn't help that she introduced herself to me using an illusionary woman only I could see or hear; before I figured out what was going on more than a couple of my friends thought I'd gone nutty.

To be fair, if magic wasn't involved, talking to invisible woman only you could see or hear would qualify one for a place in a mental institution, so I guess I can't really blame them.

Over the last few years, the image of Lasciel and I had worked out an odd sort of working relationship; hell's bells, I'd even given her a nickname, though I think that was less out of friendly affection and more just me trying to get under her skin. Getting along with Lash proved disturbingly easy to do; she wasn't your stereotypical 'I will eat your soul' demon or anything; most of the time she just seemed like a charming, witty person who genuinely wanted to use her abilities to help me. If she hadn't been a demon, we probably would've been good friends.

Of course, that was the hazard of it all. If I got in the habit of thinking of Lash as a nice friend who just wanted to help me out instead of a demon intent on corrupting me, I might start thinking that maybe I should dig up that coin buried underneath my basement so my good buddy could help me out some more.

Despite my caution, I have to admit that I'd gotten used to having Lash around, and adjusted to the various little ways she could help me out. Having access to Hellfire alone was a huge boon; Hellfire might only be useful for destructive spellcasting, and I'd learned over the years that there were risks involved in using it, but when you absolutely, positively had to kill something up, Hellfire was pretty hard to beat. Then there were the little things, like the fact that Lash had accumulated wisdom of a being who had been around since the dawn of creation, a dangerously sharp mind, and absolutely perfect recall.

And, to get back to the reason she was useful for a diplomatic mission, she spoke just about every language known to man, and a bunch that humankind had never heard of as well. I have to admit, I'd been glad when I learned that I didn't need to bother trying to cram a working knowledge of the Japanese language into my skull any more. Sadly, for all supposed wisdom and insight, Lash didn't seem up to date enough on pop culture to get it when I followed that up by asking if she could teach me kung fu in a couple seconds as well.

I guess the movie theatres in Hell haven't gotten around to showing that one yet.

Once the Vatican Treaty got through all the red tape, it would make for huge changes at Gehirn. Well, to be more accurate, it would mean the end of Gehirn, and its replacement with a new organization; Nerv. Since all the Gehirn staff was transferring to Nerv, and Gendo Ikari would still be running things, it was really just a re-branding though. Nerv would have a broader legal mandate though; Gehirn was a pure research organization, while Nerv would include a paramilitary branch and have the legal authority to do just about anything it wanted to, so long as it could be justified as necessary to combat the Angels.

In any case, my stint of trying to be a wizard James Bond proved to be an interesting experience, though I was a bit disappointed to learn that real spying didn't involve nearly so many scantily clad and exotically beautiful women throwing themselves at me. Then again, nobody was shooting at me, throwing metal hats at me or dropping me into tank full of sharks with lasers on their heads either, so I guess it all balances out.

I'd have to wait until my next side job to actually face some genuine mortal peril.


	5. Harry V

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

Reclamation zone SA-36, known as the Gran Chaco region of South America back when there still enough locals to call it something, hadn't been all that pleasant of a place before the Second Impact. It was hot, dry, largely lacking in valuable natural resources and isolated enough that not all that many people had wanted to live there. Yet, for some reason, back in the thirties two nations had gone to war with each other over who owned this stretch of worthless territory, and killed around a hundred thousand people before it was all settled.

Apparently, it was a matter of national pride. I'm sure all those corpses felt real proud afterwards.

The reason I was there was because its near-worthlessness and general unsuitability to human habitation meant that was one of those areas where even a decade after the Second Impact law and order still hadn't been restored. The Reclamation was a long and expensive process; there was no way it would even be close to done before we had to start dealing with the Angels in five years' time. While I'm not at all fond of the ice-cold bastard, I have to admit that Gendo had a point when he said that the Reclamation was a waste of resources that should be going to Gehirn. Rebuilding the areas devastated by the Second Impact wouldn't do much good if humanity was wiped out by the Third Impact halfway through the rebuilding process.

Then again, I would probably feel differently about the matter if it was my homeland getting rebuilt instead of a place I probably wouldn't have been able to find on a globe a couple weeks ago.

With Gehirn's impending reorganization into Nerv, we needed some people with actual military experience to fill out the roster. Even though fighting bandits and petty warlords in the R-zones wasn't really comparable to fighting giant freaky monsters like we expected the Angels to be, any military expertise was better than nothing. So, here I was, checking out a potential future Nerv employee.

Technically, I wasn't actually on the clock for Gehirn at the moment, I was doing a personal favor for Ritsuko Akagi, Naoko's daughter. Well, not so much a favor as paying back a debt. To be fair, I really hadn't meant to kill her computer, it's just that I happened to be standing within thirty feet of the computer when I learned that Naoko and Gendo were, to borrow a term from Toot-Toot, 'sporting.'

I was generally good enough with my suppression spell to not kill tech just by being in the same room as it, but a surprise like that was still enough to make my control slip for a bit.

It's not surprising I felt kind of bad about killing Ritsuko's computer, so I'd asked if there was some way I could make it up to her. It didn't take her long to come up with an answer; an old college buddy of hers was on the short list of candidates for one of the new military posts opening up at Nerv, and a recommendation from me would probably help her clench the spot. Of course, me being me, I decided I should probably meet this old college friend of Ritsuko's before I gave her my endorsement.

Which was why I was currently in the middle of one of the hottest, driest, and all around nastiest parts of South America, looking for Captain Misato Katsuragi of the UN Army. It was just my luck that I'd gone looking for her while her unit was in the middle of frontline operations.

If only that had been the extent of my luck.

I was searching through my third UN military camp of the day. It didn't help that all of the camps were essentially the same; a dozen or so generic military tents set up in a cluster around the command and medical tents, in the middle of a big flat featureless brown grassland broken up by areas covered sickly-looking trees that looked like they hadn't enjoyed a single decent rainfall since the Second Impact. The soldiers who weren't taking refuge in their tents were clustered under the trees to take advantage of whatever shade they could get, which wasn't all that much when most of the trees were half-dead anyway.

The heat would have been getting to me too, but within about five minutes of my arrival I'd given into Lash's offer to slap an illusion over my sense to keep me from actually noticing the heat. That indulgence could be dangerous, since it would make it all too easy for me to miss the warning signs of dehydration or heat stroke, but for now just getting some relief from the constant dry heat was more important.

I had just confirmed that yet another search for Katsuragi's unit was ending in failure when the universe decided that I obviously wasn't suffering nearly enough. "Dresden." The all-too-familiar voice ground my name out as if it were a particularly foul curse. "What are you doing here?"

The man standing before me could just about match me in height, and had a lot more hard, packed muscle to go along with it. His brown hair and neatly trimmed beard were streaked with grey, and the rest of his face was a collection of harsh lines and hard angles. His eyes, like the rest of his body, were hard and unforgiving. The general picture of a hard, dangerous man was a little broken up by the sweat stains on his shirt though.

"Morgan, I know you've had a huge man-crush on me for years now, but don't you think following me all the way to South America is taking things a little too far?" Whenever I'm annoyed or scared, I get snarky. Morgan inspired both of those feelings in roughly equal measure.

Morgan was one of the Wardens, the law enforcers of the White Council. More specifically, he had been the Warden assigned to keep an eye on me after I'd killed my old dark wizard master Justin DuMorne and my fellow apprentice Elaine. Even though it was a clear case of self-defense since they'd been trying to turn me into a thrall at the time, killing someone with magic was a violation of the Council's laws. For a lot of the time I'd known him, Morgan had been under orders to make like the Red Queen and lop off my head if I so much as set one more toe over the line again.

I'd sent a long time thinking Morgan was a pure unadulterated bastard, but we'd worked together against a nasty group of necromancers a couple years back I'd gotten to understand the man a little bit better. He'd spent a long time hunting dark wizards, seeing some of nastiest things people could do to each other using magic, and it had turned him into a hard, unforgiving, and cynical man. I'm reminded about what Nietzsche said about those who fight monsters and spend too long staring into the Abyss. Morgan hadn't gone all the way down that path, but he'd definitely been changed and tainted by long years of facing off against the nasty side of life.

Of course, just because I understood the man a bit better didn't mean I stopped thinking of him as a self-righteous prick. After all, he was a self-righteous prick. I just understood how he'd gotten that way now.

Morgan's eyes narrowed in an annoyed glare. "I'm here on Council business, Dresden, and I don't have time to deal with you. Just stay out of my way."

"Works for me." All things considered, it was probably one of the most amicable meetings I've ever had with Morgan. We ran into each other growled a bit, and then went our separate ways. Considering the fact that the meeting didn't involve a single bit of violence, attempts to incite violence, or threats of violence by either of us, we were being downright friendly. So, of course, I decided to ruin it with the next words that came out of my mouth. "By the way, I don't suppose you've heard anything about where Gamma Company is? Commanding officer is Captain Misato Katsuragi."

Morgan tensed up as soon as the question left my mouth, and I once more cursed my impressively rotten luck. "Let me guess, your Council business involves them somehow?"

"How did you know?"

"It's been that kind of day. Now spill."

Judging by the intensity of the glare he was shooting at me, it didn't look like he was willing in tell me the time of day. "What's your interest here, Dresden?"

"Doing a favor for a friend." I answered with a shrug. Actually Ritsuko Akagi a friend was a massive stretch, but Morgan didn't give a crap about that, and 'friend' was a lot quicker and less troublesome to say than 'co-worker who I owe a favor to because I melted her computer when I found out her mom was banging my biggest client.'

"Details, Dresden." I suppose my first had been a bit non-specific; it was almost as if I didn't like Morgan and didn't want to tell him any more than I really had to.

"She's an old friend of Katsuragi's, wants to play the nepotism game and help her buddy move up in the world." With a smirk, I added. "So, now that I've shown you mine, are you going to show me yours?"

Judging by the glower on his face, Morgan didn't like my choice of metaphor. Then again, I'd have been pretty grossed out at the thought of him whipping out Morgan Jr. Once he'd banished the image of my wedding tackle from his mind, Morgan gave me a nasty smile. "I don't recall agreeing to any sort of information exchange, Dresden."

Once I temporarily suppressed the urge to punch him in the face, I set my own brain to spinning. "There's something nasty out here, and those soldiers are about to get stuck right in the middle of it, aren't they?"

Morgan had a pretty good poker face, but the slight twitch of one of his eyebrows was enough to let me beat it. "Makes sense; with all this wide-open land and not many people around, there's room for all kinds of things to grab a bit of territory. So what are we up against?"

I could almost see the gears turning in Morgan's head. His first instinct was to just tell me to mind my own damn business and stay the hell out of his way. Then he realized that wouldn't work; he knew me well enough to know that if anything ordering me not to get involved would just encourage me to tell him to stick his orders where the sun don't shine, and then make myself more of a pain in the ass to him than strictly necessary. If he couldn't scare me off, having me somewhere that he could keep an eye on me might be a better move. Then again, he really didn't like me. But another wizard might help him finish whatever he needed to do. But he REALLY didn't like me.

A lot of people might have considered the fact that the two of us were out in the middle of some very isolated grassland without many witnesses around. If Morgan came out me with full-out intent to kill, I wouldn't be able to stop him; I'm a good wizard, but he's a trained combat mage with decades of experience over me, and a sword that cuts through magic. That's not the way Morgan worked, though. As much of an asshole as he could be, the man truly believed in the White Council's laws of magic. However much I annoyed him and got in his way, he wouldn't even consider taking advantage of an opportunity to kill me off. While I'd never admit that to him, it was kind of hard not to be a bit impressed by the way he was so utterly dedicated to his principles.

He was still an asshole though.

"Dresden." The warden snarled. "I can't believe I'm even considering this, but if I let you come with me, you will not so much as breathe without getting my permission first. Are we clear?"

"Yeah, yeah, if I piss you off you'll strike me down with great vengeance and furious anger, I know the drill. So what are we up against?"

Morgan took a second to swallow the rest of his pride and personal distaste for me before answering. "Red Court holdouts. UN command thought they were just another group of bandits, sent some soldiers to clear them out."

"Crap." Red Court vampires were bad news, especially to a bunch of normals that would be totally unprepared to deal with them. Most UN soldiers aren't trained to deal with monsters out of legend that can punch their way through brick walls, move faster than Bruce Lee, and view a couple bullets to the chest as a mild annoyance. "So, we're the cavalry?"

"Exactly."

"Kinda surprised the Council would send you here. I thought they didn't care about the Red's munching on a couple of mortals."

Morgan gave me a curious look, and then let out a bitter laugh. "I've thought you were a lot of things over the years Dresden, but I never realized you were naïve before. You can't seriously believe that the Council would squander the chance to put an end to one of the Vampire Courts? Did you actually think we would just allow the Red Court a chance to regain the power it had before Second Impact?" Morgan shot me a hard smile, and added. "Why did you think you faced no consequences for helping the Fellowship of St. Giles exterminate the Red Court in Chicago?"

Well, guess that little incident hadn't stayed as under-the-radar as I'd hoped. Now that I actually thought about it though, what Morgan was saying made sense; even if the current Merlin and a lot of the other top people on the Council were stuck a couple centuries in the past, they would never pass up on the chance to kick the Reds while they were down. The Council might technically be at peace with the Vampire Courts, but that peace only existed because open warfare would kill far too many people for the Council to start it willingly. Before the Second Impact the Reds had essentially run South America; nobody wanted to go back to state of affairs.

"So, we're making like Buffy and hunting us some vampires." I reached a hand down into my shirt and pulled out the silver pentacle amulet I'd inherited from my mother; it symbolized my faith in magic itself, and faith was a nice weapon to use against the Red Court. "Any idea how many we're up against?"

"No more than a dozen vampires, and most of them will have been turned post-Impact. They'll have thralls though, and possibly a few infected as well." Morgan grimaced, and reluctantly reached into his shirt pocket and produced a few hairs. "Visited the company's billet once I realized what was happening."

I carefully took the hairs from Morgan, and a thirty seconds later my tracking spell was up and running. I have to admit, I was a little surprised that Morgan let me do the tracking, and once I had the spell firmly in place I told him so.

"Lives are at stake, and you're better with tracking spells." The Warden obviously wasn't too happy about admitting that I could out-magic him in any category, but Morgan was far too much of a straight arrow to let his pride put people in danger. "We should hurry; the sun won't be up forever."

* * *

Riding around on the South American plains in a jeep that looked like it was military surplus from World War II with one of my least favorite people in the world was not the way I would have preferred to spend a Saturday afternoon. It didn't help that the temperature was well into the triple digits, and with two full-blown wizards in the vehicle there was no chance in hell that the air conditioning would be working. Lash might be able to keep me from actually feeling the heat, but I just because I didn't notice the heat didn't mean I couldn't get in trouble from heat stroke or dehydration.

The heat didn't even abate after the sun dropped to the bottom of the horizon, though Morgan's mood and mine took a turn for the worse once we realized that we weren't going to link up with the UN soldiers while the sun was still blazing in the sky. As long as the sun was still up the Reds would have to stay indoors; though their thralls could still come out and cause problems, but the UN soldiers could probably manage against a group of mere vampire thralls. Once the sun was down, the vampires themselves would come out to play, and that's when the army would be in big trouble.

"I'm just saying, if making a how-to-guide for killing Black Court vamps worked so well, why not publish some books on how to kill the other Courts too?" After all the damage _Dracula_ did to the Black Court it seemed quite workable, especially since the Black Court was one of the nastiest ones out there on an individual basis.

"Because we don't want to drag mortals into more trouble than we have to." Morgan countered. "Do you have any idea how many amateur vampire hunters the Wardens have had to save over the years?" The other man's expression soured, and he added. "Also, we actually tried that a few years ago with the White Court. It backfired, and now millions of teenaged girls believe that being a White Court vampire's thrall is a wonderfully romantic thing."

I made a mental note to take advantage of that little tidbit of information to mess with Thomas some more; I hadn't gotten a good laugh at his expense over those books since the practical joke with the adhesion spell five dollars' worth of glitter. Once he'd gotten over his anger and stopped threatening to play Cain to my Able, he thought it was funny too.

Morgan cut me out of my thoughts with an upraised hand and a hard look. After a few silent moments, the Warden hissed in a low voice. "You hear that Dresden?"

I Listened carefully for a moment, and then nodded. "Yeah. Gunfire." My eyes flicked to the tiny sliver of sunlight still hanging over the horizon. We didn't have much time; once the sun was down the vampires would be up, and the flat grassland dotted with occasional scrub trees wouldn't give us a very long period of dusk before total nightfall. Fighting vampires at all was bad enough; fighting them with nothing more than starlight to see by was likely to get us killed.

Once we broke through a line of dried out scrub trees, we finally came within sight of the battleground. The Reds were holed up in an old Spanish manor house that looked like it dated all the way back to the colonial era. Some aspects of the villa had obviously undergone some modernization since the place was built though; most authentic colonial-era villas don't have machine-gun emplacements on the walls and guard towers.

The UN force, on the other hand, had me a bit surprised. "I thought they were an infantry company. Why are there just a bunch of tanks?" The tanks were drawn up in a half-circle around the Red Court compound, and certainly seemed to be doing a good job of ripping the Reds' position to pieces with their guns. Meanwhile, it looked like the Reds shooting back didn't look like they had anything that was actually capable of taking down armored vehicles.

"Morgan shot me a rather annoyed look. "Those aren't tanks Dresden, they're IFVs. It's an armored infantry company." Morgan obviously noted my look of blank incomprehension, and decided to elaborate. "Infantry Fighting Vehicles." After another second of blank silence on my part, Morgan sighed and explained in a painfully slow voice. "The soldiers ride in around in vehicles with armor and guns on them instead of walking around on foot."

"Got it." I was wizard private investigator; military hardware wasn't something I kept up with. I guess Morgan had the advantage over me there; being old enough to have lived through both of the World Wars probably helped with that kind of thing.

Morgan shot me a nasty grin and commented drily. "I'm sure you already knew that though, Dresden. After all, everyone knows how the younger generation of wizards like you are far more in touch with the modern world than washed-up old fossils like me."

"Don't be a smartass Morgan, that's my job. Besides, it freaks me out when you actually display a sense of humor." I returned my attention to battlefield. "Looks like they've got things well in hand so far, but I don't see any of the Reds, just their thralls."

Morgan gave a grunt of agreement. "The vampires are probably outflanking the UN forces. Explains why the thralls are still shooting even though they don't have the firepower to hurt the IFVs; keep the UN's attention on them, so their masters can hit the army from behind." The old warden gave a tight grin. "Of course, the Reds don't know we're here. When they make their move and come out into the open, we hit them hard and fast. You like fire Dresden; use some of it. That way we'll catch the UN's attention and they won't be caught completely off guard by the vampires that get past us."

It would have been nice if we could warn the army about the Red Court's outflanking maneuver before it actually happened, but I knew that wasn't an option. If we were lucky, Katsuragi and the other UN soldiers would dismiss us as a couple of harmless lunatics; if we weren't, they would think we were working with the 'bandits' and trying to distract them. I suppose we could have omitted any mention of vampires and just said the enemy was outflanking them, but even then the odds that a couple of random and very oddly dressed civilians would get taken seriously in the short amount of time we would have before the Reds hit were effectively nil, and we would surrender the element of surprise against the vampires in the process.

_By the way, don't channel any Hellfire my way, Lash. Morgan might recognize it, and him finding out I'm playing host to one of the Fallen is trouble I don't need._

_As you wish, my host. _Lash's mental voice purred in my ears obligingly.

Morgan parked the jeep back behind the scrub trees, and the two of us set up our position on a small hill that was closest thing to high ground the area had. I just hoped the vampires were obliging enough to attack before things got completely dark. Lucky for us, Morgan and I spotted the dark shadows advancing on the rear of the UN position while we still had a few glimmers of twilight left to work with. I guess they decided there was no reason to let the UN shoot up their home base for a few more minutes just to wait until total night fell.

I pulled out my blasting rod and, after getting a nod of confirmation from Morgan, let out a cry of "Fuego." I didn't put too much effort into concentrating the blast of flame; Red Court vampires were flammable enough that you didn't need to hit them with a tight beam of white-hot flame to get results, and as fast as they were covering a wide area was the best way to make it hard for them to dodge. Plus, obviously, a bigger fire would get the UN's attention faster.

The blast of fire cooked one of the Red Court vamps completely, and revealed the rest of the horribly creatures clearly. Red Court vampires are not the pale, exotically beautiful and sophisticated creatures you see in the movies. They could craft a flesh mask to give them the appearance of a human form, and that form did usually fit the classic image of the charming, cultured vampire, but underneath that flesh mask they were hideous, flabby, and greasy-skinned bat-like things. These vampires already had their game-faces on, and weren't bothering to hide their monstrous nature behind flesh masks.

Now that the firelight I provided revealed the rest of the vampires, Morgan made his move, growling out a phrase in archaic German and sweeping his staff at the Red Court. Stone arms burst out of the ground and latched onto a trio of vampires, pinning them down on the ground before slowly crushing them into the earth's embrace, while another blast of fire from yours truly accounted for a second monster.

Between the two of us, Morgan and I had accounted for nearly half of the vampires' numbers before they even knew we were there. Out of the remaining seven, two of them tried to charge us, but with no terrain to hide behind or dodge around in the wide open grassland, Morgan and I took them down before they even got close to us.

Unfortunately, the rest of the vampires played it smarter, and continued their charge against the UN forces instead of coming after us. Closing in with the humans would keep me and Morgan from just sitting back and slinging long range spellfire at the vamps. Morgan might be a bastard, but he's not the kind of guy who would even consider throwing any sort of magical attack that would put ordinary humans at risk; the Council's laws against using magic to kill covered collateral damage as well as outright murder, after all. Thanks to the forewarning given by my little fireworks display, one of the UN IFV's managed to move its gun around in time to target one of the vamps. Red Court vampires are tough to kill with normal weapons, but getting hit by several 30 mm shells did a nice job of reducing the vamp to the consistency of chunky salsa.

The four remaining Reds were on top of the UN forces before they had time to mount a proper response. The vamps simply barreled straight into the sides of four of the armored vehicles, and the combination of their momentum and their hideous unnatural strength was enough to flip all four of the vehicles, leaving them like a group of turtles knocked on their backs.

Morgan and I rushed in to help the beleaguered uN soldiers. Plinking away at the vampires from long range wasn't doable as long as they were mixed in with the UN forces, but once we got close enough it would be easy to smack the vamps down without a serious risk of collateral damage. As we closed in one of the vamps got a little too cocky and climbed up on top of one of the upended IFVs, only to promptly be swatted down when my force spell smacked it less than half a second after a 30mm shell from one of the undamaged IFVs disintegrated it's right leg.

Once we were in among the UN forces, Morgan and I split up to take down the three vampires that were left. Judging by the vaguely Germanic growl I heard a few seconds later, followed by an inhuman death shriek, Morgan had knocked it down to two vampires left.

I found one of the remaining vamps crawling out of an IFV it had peeled open like a tin can, and the gore spattering it's greasy hid and smeared across its bat-like face gave me a fairly good idea of what happened to the vehicle's crew and passengers.

If the vampire had been smart, it would have broken and run. Between the fading light and just how freaking fast a Red Court Vampire can move, it probably would have stood a decent chance of getting away from me. However, vampires don't always think things through rationally. The way my White Court half-brother Thomas had explained it to me, vampires are driven by a primal desire to feed. Some vampires can control their hunger, and others let it control them, to the point where they become little more than beasts. Even the ones that are in control will never have a perfect grasp on their inner demon; push them into a corner, hit the right buttons, or expose them to tempting enough prey, and even a vampire as carefully controlled as Thomas will turn feral. The Reds also tended to be a lot like sharks, in that the very sight of freshly shed human blood would set most of them off, and leave the rest straining to keep their urges in check.

Between the pressure of combat and the sight and smell of human blood, this vamp had lost whatever measure of control it had. It didn't see me as a wizard who could almost smack it down with a fairly minor effort; it just another couple pints of human blood it could get.

I quickly disabused it of that notion. A cry of "Forzare," pinned the vampire against the side of the IFV with enough force to rock the overturned vehicle. Rather than simply waste any more magical power on the beast, I pulled out a shotgun whose barrel I had cut short enough to get me in trouble with most law enforcement officials, and put a burst into the creature's head. Just to be safe, I put a second shot into the beast's flabby gut, rupturing its stomach open and spilling out all the blood it had collected. As long as they have enough human blood, Reds can survive just about anything that doesn't kill them outright; blow open their stomach to take away their blood stockpile though, and most Reds will die on the spot.

I stood over the slain vampire, and casually racked a fresh shell into my shotgun. "Groovy."

Naturally, the last surviving vampire hit me from behind right in the middle of my moment of triumph. My spell-enhanced duster shrugged off most of the force from the vampire's blow; what got through still hurt like hell and put me down on the ground, but without the duster the vampire probably would have punched straight through my chest.

I barely had time to rise to a sitting position and bring up my shield before the vampire was on me again, slamming into the multi-colored dome of defensive energies I'd raised around myself. Doing any proper spellcasting while maintaining my defensive shield would be tricky. I had plenty of ways to hit back at the vampire, but counter-attacking would require lowering my shield to let my attack hit it; no point it letting loose with my kinetic energy rings or shooting it with my shotgun when the attack would just bounce right off the inside of my own shield. The timing would be close, but I was pretty sure I could handle it; I'd been in worse situations.

Before I got a chance to do that, thirty UN-standard rifle rounds tore into the vampire on full automatic, sending the creature staggering back with a high-pitched hiss of pain. The female UN soldier who had come to my rescue stepped forward and slammed the butt of her rifle into the creature's face, and then took advantage of the moment the creature was dazed to yank out a pistol and put two rounds into the vampire's face, then two more into its stomach.

I pulled myself slowly to my feet wincing at the hints of soreness already manifesting from the one hit the vampire had managed to land on me. "All right there?" The woman asked. "Looked like you took a pretty nasty hit."

I gave the woman a quick once over, and gave a quick nod. "Wasn't as bad as it looked. Thanks for help, Captain Katsuragi."

"Misato. Anyone who kills vampires with me gets to call me Misato." Misato frowned down at the vampire she'd killed. "These things are vampires, right?"

"Yeah." I might have been a little surprised by how well she was taking things in stride, but I'd seen a lot of people deal with their first run-in with the supernatural. A lot of people just freaked out and went into denial; after spending your entire life convinced that the freaky things out there don't exist, finding out that yeah, they really do is a nasty shock.

However, some folks handle it differently; maybe they're more open-minded, or maybe their brains just put aside the freak-out until they have time to do it in relative safety. When I first met Murph, she hadn't been clued into the supernatural world, but when she ran into a troll she waded right in and helped me take it down, and then had the usual freak-out after the situation was resolved. A couple of the other, better Special Investigations cops were the same way. When trouble went down, their brains just bypassed all that troublesome stuff like the fact that supernatural monsters shouldn't exist, and they just kind of accepted the whole thing, at least until the adrenaline high wore off and they had enough time to actually think about what happened instead of running on instinct.

Obviously, Misato was cut from the same cloth. I guess it figured; the army puts a lot of effort into training people to keep a cool head and continue fighting when any ordinary person would be curled up on the ground gibbering in terror. Then again she had known to go after the vamp's blood supply, so maybe she had experience? "How did you know to shoot them in the stomach once they were down?"

"Saw you put a second shot into the one you got, figured you probably had a good reason for it." Misato gave a careless shrug. So, no experience with the supernatural, but she was sharp and a good observer. "So who are you supposed to be, anyway?"

"I'm supposed to be Harry Dresden, wizard." Noting the return of my sour-looking temporary ally, I commented. "He's Donald Morgan, wizard by trade, asshole by choice."

Misato frowned at the two of us for a moment, and then gave another shrug. "Well, normally I wouldn't believe anyone who claimed that they were a wizard, but my unit just got attacked by vampires." Misato looked over the rest of her soldiers. "Thanks for the assist, by the way. You can explain why you're here and what exactly your deal is on the way back to base; I've got wounded who need tending to, and I don't know about you, but after what we just went through I think I need at least a couple beers."


	6. Harry VI

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

Sometimes, I really wanted to just punch Gendo Ikari right in the face.

He could be a ruthless son of a bitch, but that part I could live with. It's unfortunate, but in an imperfect world sometimes you need a ruthless son of a bitch to get the job done. With the survival of the entire human race at stake, I could even accept and very reluctantly agree with some of the choices he made. I'm not a big believer in the idea that the ends completely justify the means, but there were a lot of things I was prepared to do before I'd let the Third Impact happen.

I'm pretty sure that's why Lash had cut down on her efforts to tempt me into taking up the coin that contained the rest of her essence. It's not that she had given up; it's just that we both knew she didn't need to tempt me anymore. If it came down to a choice between me taking up the damned (in a very literal sense of the word) coin or letting the Third Impact happen, I wouldn't hesitate to use the power Lash offered me. I'm a big believer in sticking by your principles, but sticking by them to the point of letting billions of people die is going too far.

So, I could understand Gendo Ikari doing some nasty things in order the save the world. Problem was, he didn't limit his bastard tendencies to just that area.

The nine-year old kid walking down the street to school looked way too miserable for a child his age. His head was bowed down, his shoulders were hunched, and his eyes never rose up from their fixed gaze on the sidewalk. A set of earphones plugged into an old SDAT player completed the image of miserable isolation. The Shinji Ikari I saw now was a far cry from the cheerful little kid I'd seen with his mother seven years ago.

I'd thought more than once about trying to get closer to the poor kid; everything about him screamed how miserably alone he was. Of course, there were a huge number of reasons that wouldn't work. Unfortunately, in this day and age a strange man, especially a foreigner like me, couldn't just walk up to a little boy and be his friend without lots of people getting the wrong idea. All those years of warning kids about 'stranger danger' had their side effects.

Plus, there was no telling how Gendo would react to me going out of my way to befriend his son. Sure, he might have tossed the kid aside shortly after Yui's death, but I knew he got regular reports on how Shinji was doing, and word would get back to him quickly if I approached the kid. Gendo was a hard man to read, but getting myself involved in his private family business probably wouldn't go over well.

On top of that, if I was honest with myself, there probably wasn't all that much I could really do for the kid. I suppose if everything worked out right I could've been his friend, but Shinji Ikari didn't need a friend, he needed a father. His father. That was where his real problem lay. He felt like his father had rejected him, and no amount of friendship or approval from anyone else could ever fill the gap that left in his heart. In time, the kid would probably learn to deal with it, people are good at learning to survive no matter how painful life is, but he'd always carry the scars.

Then again, I'm not sure how much of my desire to look out for Shinji was actually driven by genuine human decency, as opposed to just being a way of displacing my guilt over my part in what happened to his mother. It might have been Yui's decision to merge her soul with Unit 01, but if I'd said or done something differently she might not have made that choice.

At least the kid had decent guardians. He'd been bounced around between a bunch of different people over the years, but Gendo apparently cared enough to have someone do the research first and make sure he wasn't getting tossed into a bad home. Back when I was a kid I hadn't been that lucky; nothing serious until DuMorne, but I'd had a few foster parents who thought it was alright to smack me once or twice when they were drunk or just in a bad mood. At least Shinji didn't have problems like that.

So, in the end, I could only do a few little things for him. I checked up on the kid every once in a while, sent him a little birthday present every year that went along with the one Fuyutsuki bought for him and put Gendo's name on. I did little things that I hoped could help him out a bit. And I nursed my budding hatred for Gendo Ikari.

* * *

With the official transformation of the research group Gehirn into the paramilitary organization Nerv set to happen tomorrow, I was in Tokyo-3 to deal with my part in the massive amount of red tape that inevitably accumulates around any major government action. Turning Gehirn into Nerv was a lot more complicated that just changing the stationary.

I personally had an extra set of complications to work out, since my status in Gehirn didn't transfer very easily to Nerv. Gehirn hadn't been that large of an organization, and for the most part the hierarchy had been fairly informal. As a paramilitary organization, Nerv couldn't get away with that kind of loose attitude. Nerv needed to have a clear chain of command and strictly defined lines of responsibility, rather than the loose system that was acceptable in the Gehirn days.

That level of strict hierarchy was a problem for my role in the new organization. Unsurprisingly, my actual status as Gehirn's in-house wizard wasn't the sort of thing you could put on the official forms for the UN. Technically speaking, for the last seven years I had just been an ordinary civilian consultant under contract to Gehirn. Officially, a contracted civilian like me should have anywhere near the authority, access, or knowledge that I did. Gehirn had been able to get away with stretching the definition of civilian contractor to include me; Nerv couldn't.

Suffice to say, after a day's worth of navigating the bureaucratic maze that was the UN and brainstorming with Fuyutsuki, we had managed to hammer out something that should satisfy the requirements for the new organization. My official title was a long string of appropriately military jargon that could basically be summed up as "high-ranking guy with vaguely defined duties who reports directly to the Commander."

Nerv being a paramilitary organization, my title was also accompanied by an equivalent-rank of Major in the Nerv chain of command. I was still a civilian so I didn't actually hold military rank, but the equivalent-rank clarified my position in the hierarchy so that if I told a Lieutenant to do something the soldier would do it instead of my request causing a bunch of confusion as everyone tried to sort whether or not they actually had to listen to me.

Being a Major-equivalent put me below the Research Director and the Operations Director (both of whom would Lt. Colonels, though Akagi held equivalent rank like me), and obviously the Commander and Sub-Commander outranked me, but finding out I was officially fifth in the chain of command of the main branch of Nerv was a bit of a shock. Then again, if we were in a situation where Ikari, Fuyutsuki, Akagi, and Katsuragi were all unavailable, I would be the only person in Nerv available who would know about things like the fact that we had Lilith down in Terminal Dogma, so I suppose there is a certain kind of logic to it, and as far as I knew I had more actual combat experience than anyone other than Misato. I would say that the odds of me actually ever having to use that hypothetical authority or non-existent, but I've seen enough movies to know that if I actually say that there's no way I'll ever end up in command then I would just be jinxing myself, and it would definitely happen.

Technically speaking, I would actually be #4 in the chain of command for the next few years. While her won impressive record and recommendations from Ritsuko and myself had gotten Misato earmarked as the future Operations Director, Nerv wasn't actually going to need an Operations Department until we started combat operations against the Angels. For the next few years, Misato would be in Germany working on the training program for the future Evangelion pilots.

My new status at Nerv did add a few other complications. While I didn't have to move just yet, I did need to have a residence in Tokyo-3 for appearances' sake. Explaining that I could make the commute from Chicago to Tokyo-3 in about half an hour wouldn't really fly with all those pesky government agencies that don't believe in things like magic.

Any further musing I might have done on the changes in my status at Nerv were cut short when I noticed the only blond currently in Gehirn's employ approaching me intently. I offered her a polite greeting, while being vaguely annoyed by the fact that Ritsuko and were on a last-name basis. It's not that I really wanted to be friends with her or anything; it's just that since I was also on a last name basis with her mother, so it led to some annoyances when I had to clarify which Akagi I was referring to.

"Hello Mr. Dresden." Ritsuko's tone was terse and businesslike, but then most of the time I spoke with her she was either terse or bitingly sarcastic. "If you could come with me Mr. Dresden, there is something I would like to show you." Ritsuko was still a relative newcomer to Gehirn, and since she was working under her mother she no doubt felt like she was under even more pressure than usual to prove herself. Personally, I wondered if she might not have been happier working a different field; it was obvious that she felt a bit overshadowed by her famous and well-established mother, and she likely would have had an easier time making her own identity elsewhere. As it is, I'm pretty sure part of the reason she dyed her hair was to lessen the family resemblance between them. I know Molly has gone though a couple dozen bottle of hair dye in the process of figuring out her identity. At least Ritsuko stuck with blond instead of some of the crazy colors Molly's tried over the years, and never took an interest in piercings. The mental image of Ritsuko Akagi with pink hair and a nose ring was good for a few giggles.

"I will follow your lead, Fearless Leader." I suppose the younger Akagi and I did have a semi-decent working relationship, just because she had enough of a sarcastic streak that I didn't worry about indulging my inner smartass with her. Helping Misato snag her job at Nerv probably helped too, though from what I knew of the two women it seemed like they had a rather unlikely friendship. Well, it wouldn't be the first time two people with very different personalities somehow managed to get along with each other. At least she'd adjusted to the whole wizard thing reasonably well; of course, she probably knew about me from her mother before she started working at Nerv two years ago, so she'd had plenty of time.

A few minutes later the two of us arrived at the mostly completed command center at Central Dogma. There were still a lot of little things left to be done before the command center would up and ready, but all the basic framework had been completed, and moving in the equipment and getting everything else set up would only take a few months. Of course, the lighting was still less than ideal, and there was a lot of bare metal, but those were cosmetic details.

The thing that immediately caught my attention was the thick red stripe running along the floor and walls of the room in a rough semi-circle, which looked fresh enough that I suspected touching it would get my hands stained. "Do you see that line, Mister Dresden?"

"Kind of hard to miss." I quipped.

"You are not allowed to cross that line. Ever."

"Any particular reason? Is that where Nerv's 'No Harrys' club is going to meet and complain about me and my barbaric uncultured American ways?"

Ritsuko's lips gave a brief upward twitch before returning to a stonily serious expression. "If you cross that line, Mister Dresden, you will have come within thirty meters of the Magi supercomputers. The most advanced supercomputers on the planet, which will be responsible for running most of Nerv HQs essential functions. The supercomputers that my mother and I have spent the last seven years and billions of yen creating. That is why you may not cross this line."

"I have gotten pretty good at suppressing my magical energy, you know." I protested halfheartedly. The thing was, while she could have been a bit less brusque about it, I pretty much agreed with her overall point. It was the same reason I wouldn't get too close to other parts of Nerv-HQ, like the nuclear reactor that was going to power the entire facility; any glitches I could cause might have catastrophic consequences. Seven years of practicing and tweaking my tricks for suppressing the stray bits of magical energy that caused tech to die around me had gotten it to the point where as long as I kept a cool head and didn't actually sling any power around, I would almost never cause problems, but even a million-to-one chance of something going wrong was way too big of a risk to take when it came to the supercomputers running all of Nerv-HQ or anything with the word nuclear in it.

Still, the whole 'Harry Dresden Exclusion Zone' thing could have been worded a bit more diplomatically. "I've got it, Ritsuko. If I cross the line and get too close to Magi, you kill me."

"No, I'm not allowed to kill you while Commander Ikari still has a use for you." Ritsuko deadpanned. "So, if you cross that line without a _very_ good reason, I'll castrate you." Ritsuko gave a nasty and asked all-too-sweetly "That won't interfere with your ability to perform your duties at Nerv, right?"

"Okay." I drew the word out a bit to cover my instinctive wince at the thought of anything happening to that part of my anatomy. "I think I'll just stay on this side of the line from now on, so we'll never have to find out if that will be a problem. I'm glad we had this talk." I heard a snigger in the back of my mind, and after confirming that Ritsuko wasn't the source of it, mentally commanded the fallen angel sharing my brain space to stop laughing at me. Unfortunately, that only seemed to encourage her.

I tell you, I get no respect at all.

Now that she was done delivering her ultimatum, a brief silence fell between Ritsuko and I, before the blond spoke up once more, this time keeping her tone a bit more friendly. "By the way, Misato's going to be in Tokyo-3 tonight; you're not the only one who needs to jump through a few bureaucratic hoops to deal with the changeover." Ritsuko paused for a few moments, and then added. "She and I were planning to go out for drinks later."

I was a bit surprised by the implicit invitation, though I suppose I shouldn't have been. After all, like many young people eager to prove themselves Ritsuko was a workaholic who almost never left the Geofront, so I probably was one of the few people in her rough age group that she actually associated with on a regular basis, and we did get along reasonably well. I had been planning to just head back to Chicago in a bit, but I didn't really have a pressing need to do so, and spending an evening with a pair of attractive twenty-somethings sounded reasonably appealing. Granted, even if they were interested it would probably be a bad idea to actually get romantically involved with either of them, and might even be against some of Nerv's rules, but there was nothing wrong with just a bit of harmless socializing, and I could live with 'look, but don't touch.' Keeping my attitude appropriately casual I remarked. "I've got one or two things to take care of here; if I finish up in time, I might join you two."

Ritsuko simply nodded, then glanced at me, taking appropriate care not to look me in the eyes. "By the way Mister Dresden, did the two of you really kill vampires in South America?" I recognized the tone Ritsuko had; it was the way a lot of people talked when they knew enough about the all things magical to accept that some parts of it existed, but hadn't quite adapted their worldview to encompass the existence of an entire supernatural world. Ritsuko could accept that I was a wizard, but she was still having a bit of trouble dealing with things like vampires.

"I killed the vampires; Misato just stood on the sidelines commenting on how awesome and manly I was the entire time." I dropped my voice to a stage whisper and added. "Don't say anything if she claims that she took down a vampire that was about five seconds away from eating me; I actually had the situation under control, but I don't want to hurt her pride too much. Besides, it would have been rude to kill all of the vampires by myself."

"How very generous of you." Ritsuko deadpanned.

The two of us parted ways, Ritsuko taking off for her meeting with her old friend, while headed down several levels within the half-finished headquarters to reach the area that had essentially become my domain. I actually didn't need much more than a large conference room, and even that was mostly just because of how much space Little Tokyo-3 took up. Aside from that all I really needed were a few shelves for supplies, a filing cabinet to keep my notes in, and the secure locker for the staff hair samples and a few of the more valuable or hazardous materials I worked with.

Most the space allocated for my use was actually just a buffer zone, so that I wouldn't fry any equipment when I had to make with the magic. Considering the sheer size of the massive underground Geofront complex, space was one thing we had plenty of. Of course, not all the space was going to waste; I did have a nice backup lab/workshop put together for when I would need to do my work here. That was one of the downsides of Tokyo-3; large basement apartments were a bit problematic when the city was suspended over a massive underground cavity.

Given the general techbane nature of my lair, and the fact that I had made it fairly clear that messing around with some of my magical equipment could have unpleasant consequences, it was pretty rare for anyone else aside from me to be there. So, I was a little surprised to find a nine-year-old girl standing in my lab, studying Little Tokyo-3 intently.

I'd heard about the young girl Gendo Ikari had apparently taken in, but I'd never actually had the chance to meet her before. I was reasonably certain that this child was in fact Rei Ayanami; the odds of there being more than one pale-skinned blue-haired red-eyed nine-year-old running around the Geofront were pretty low. Since Molly's hair had gone through just about every color of the rainbow, including a shade of blue pretty close to Rei's, I had enough experience to recognize that Rei's hair was probably naturally that color. After all, Molly had never bothered to dye her eyebrows. I wasn't as surprised by the girl's unusual appearance as most people were; being a wizard, naturally blue hair ranks pretty low on my weird -shitometer.

Rei simply regarded me levelly, a blank expression on her face, while I wrapped my mind around the fact that an unsupervised child had been running around a whole lot of delicate magical gear. Once the silence extended to the point of being awkward, I decided to deal with one thing at a time, and put on my best kid-friendly smile. "Well hello there Rei. You are Rei, aren't you?" The child gave a slight nod in response to my rhetorical question. "Well, I'm Harry Dresden; nice to meet you."

"Hello Mister Dresden." The girl answered softly, her face still devoid of any expression.

"So … what are you doing here by yourself?" A quick once-over confirmed that she had not inflicted any obvious damage on my lab, although considering how flat and generally lifeless she was acting, I couldn't really imagine her running around screaming and inflicting random destruction the way some little kids her age are wont to do.

"The Commander is occupied with other matters, and instructed me to familiarize myself with the layout of the Geofront." A couple seconds later, Rei added. "I am lost." The girl said this without a hint of the shame or embarrassment most children would show upon admitting this. "I was studying this model in the hopes that it would allow me to ascertain my current location."

Something about the girl was nagging on me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. A second later, the voice in my head provided the answer, and an illusionary Yui Ikari sprang into being right next to Rei. As soon as I saw the two of them side-by-side, I realized that aside from the hair and eye colors, and the obvious differences in age and size, the two of them were identical. They even had the same haircut.

_Thanks Lash. _She might be trying to tempt me into damnation, but having a fallen angel in your head can be handy when said Fallen has a photographic memory and makes the best illusions I've ever seen.

_I live to serve, my host. _Lash tried to sound humble, but there was just a bit too much snark in her tone to make it believable. She was getting to be more and more of a smartass over the years; I must be having a bad influence on her. At least I hadn't turned her into a pervert like Bob … yet.

Now I knew something was definitely off about the girl. On top of the odd hair and eye colors, which weren't necessarily a sign of anything spooky by themselves, there was the fact that she was a mini-Yui, and as I studied the girl I noted an air of subtle wrongness surrounding the girl. Almost everything about her, from her blank expression to the way she seemed to study whatever she looked at just a bit too intently, seemed just the slightest bit off.

I opened my Third Eye, and Saw Rei Ayanami. I wasn't expecting anything too extreme; if I had to guess, I would have said that Gendo had tried to clone his wife, or maybe artificially produce a child using stored genetic material, and it hadn't come out quite right. As often happens distressingly often when I assume something isn't dangerous, I was wrong. Fortunately, I guess curiosity takes a little bit longer to kill the wizard than it does the cat (not that's it has caused Mister any trouble).

Try to imagine you saw something so indescribably that you literally couldn't even begin to comprehend what it was. Imagine that when you looked at it you saw colors that shouldn't exist, arranged in impossible shapes. Everything about her was just so _alien_. So _wrong_.

And yet, at the same time, she was also a human child. She was a little hungry, and a bit nervous about the fact that she was lost and didn't know where her guardian was or how to get back to him.

I think it was duality of it that really got to me. The fact that Rei Ayanami was simultaneously an utterly inhuman abomination and a little child. It was trying to wrap my mind around that concept, the fact that she could simultaneously be both of these utterly contradictory things that really did it. It was like trying to make yourself accept that blue and orange were actually the same color. Her very existence and nature were an affront to my entire sense of reality.

It was a struggle to force my Sight closed, especially since I was being distracted by someone in the room screaming and gibbering incoherently at the top of their lungs. I eventually realized with a detached sort of surprise that it was me. However, I was eventually able to calm myself, close my sight, force myself not to think of what I had just Seen, and return my mind to the present.

I took several deep breaths as a I slowly enhanced my calm, and then opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was Rei, looking at me, her head cocked slightly to the side like a curious bird studying something that caught her interest.

And I remembered.

The next few hours are a bit fuzzy in my memory. If you've ever really tried not to think of something, then you know it's just impossible to do. That goes double for anything you see with the Sight, since for the rest of your life, you always remember it with absolute crystalline clarity. Even if I lived for centuries, as many powerful wizards did, I would always recall every detail of the horror of Seeing Rei as if it had happened just moments ago.

Still, while the memory could never be forgotten or blocked out, it could be endured. So I remembered. And I suffered. And I remembered again. With each repetition of the cycle, I moved forward. People are tough, and we know how to adapt in order to survive. While it was still a horrifying thing, the second time I remembered what I had Seen hurt less than the first, and the third time hurt even less than that. The memory would never stop being viscerally horrifying on a certain level, but I forced myself to learn how to live with that horror.

Like they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

When I finally began to recover from the shock of Seeing Rei, I wasn't quite sure where I was; I'd been expecting to wake up in a hospital bed, not the middle of a sunny field of flowers. A couple seconds later, I realized that if wasn't in a bed, than the soft, warm thing my head was resting on probably wasn't a pillow. That was confirmed a moment later, when my headrest shifted a bit, and a soft, feminine hand gently brushed over my forehead.

When I finally looked up, I saw the tall, athletic blond form Lash was fond of assuming whenever she presented herself to me. Since my head was currently resting on her lap I couldn't tell for sure, but I was reasonably sure she was also wearing her normal Greco-Roman style tunic. I knew she was quite capable of changing the image she presented to me at will, but for some reason she favored this particular form. Maybe it was a close approximation to her true form back when she had been an angel. Then again, given that her whole deal was to tempt me into darkness, maybe the form she used around me was some sort ideal woman who I was supposed to be find impossible to resist; it's not like she couldn't have pulled that out of my subconscious if she really wanted to.

"Feeling better now Harry?" Lash smiled down at me kindly.

"Yeah." The smart thing to do would have been to move; cuddling with a fallen angel was almost certainly a bad idea, not to mention the weird factor that came from all of this just being an illusion she was projecting inside my head. However, it was a very nice illusion. When you've just been through some nasty psychic trauma, there are few things that can top a beautiful woman's lap for offering comfort. So I didn't quite get around to objecting. "Thanks Lash."

"I live to serve, my host." There was more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice; like I said before, I'm a bad influence on her. Lash's expression shifted to one of concern. "By the way Harry, Ikari is waiting to speak to you, presumably about the … _thing_ you Saw." Clearly, Lash was a bit put out by the experience; then again, she'd always seemed rather annoyed by anything related to the Angels, mostly because it was one of the few topics she knew absolutely nothing about, and she usually enjoyed lording her superior knowledge and experience over me. "Are you ready to face him?"

"No time like the present." I blinked, and suddenly instead of being in a flower-filled field with Lash, I was in an ordinary featureless white hospital room. Gendo Ikari set the book he had been reading aside, and turned to face me, placing his hands the armrests of his chair and folding his hands across the lower half of his face. It seemed to be his favorite pose for any serious discussion; maybe the man just has such a crappy poker face that the only way to keep people from reading him like an open book was to hide as much of his face as possible.

The smart thing to do probably would have been to play it cool. Maybe try to deny that I knew anything at all, or play it like I knew more than I actually did, and see if I could trick him into revealing enough facts for me to fill in the gaps. However, after spending a couple of hours putting myself through a psychic wringer, I wasn't in the mood to be diplomatic and play word games.

So instead I jumped out of bed, strode over to the man, grabbed two handfuls of his labcoat, yanked him right out of his chair, and slammed him against the wall. "What the hell have you done?" A quick check confirmed that my staff and blasting rod were in the corner of the room, and he'd left the rest of my magical gear on me. I guess that means he either hadn't been expecting the conversation to get violent, or was confident in his ability to talk me down.

Gendo certainly seemed perfectly calm despite the fact that I was kind of assaulting him at the moment; he wasn't trying to resist or break my grip; instead he just calmly looked me directly in the eyes. There was a hint of challenge in his face, a tightening of the jawline and hardening of his eyes. I didn't back down; to be honest, I wanted to soulgaze him, if for no other reason than to get past that shell of detached disinterest he constantly carried around himself, and figure how the hell he could do some of the things he did.

What I found was unexpected. Well, that's not entirely true; the first things I discovered about him were pretty much exactly what I had expected. Gendo Ikari was a cold and driven man. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he would let absolutely nothing get in his way, and do absolutely anything if it could help him accomplish his goals. If I threatened his goals he would order my death without a moment's hesitation; if I could help him, he would put all the resources of Nerv at my disposal.

It was what lay underneath the cold, driven man that surprised me. It was the small, hidden core of self-loathing that was so deeply buried that he probably didn't even know that it existed himself. He blamed himself for what happened to Yui; he should have found another way to make the Evangelion work, or barring that at least found a way to convince her not to sacrifice herself. He blamed himself for what happened to her.

Even more surprising was the subject of his son. At least now I understood why the man had been a bastard to his Shinji, and I suppose in a way it was oddly to his credit. Gendo Ikari knew he was a terrible father. That was why he had abandoned Shinji; not simply out of cruelty or callousness (though those were certainly factors in how and why he had made that decision) but also because the man genuinely believed that Shinji was better off without his father in his life.

It might have made me feel a bit sympathetic towards the bastard, if not for the fact that he was right. Gendo Ikari was a terrible father. After all, if it came down to it, Gendo wouldn't hesitate to use Shinji just like he would any other asset. That's what it meant to have no limits in the pursuit of his goals. Shinji was better off far away from the man, and as much as it hurt the kid to be tossed aside by his only remaining parent, Gendo actually trying to raise him would have made things infinitely worse. At least now, the kid might one day be able to have a normal life.

The soulgaze ended, and I released Gendo and took a half-step back as I recovered from the effects of it. For his part, Gendo simply adjusted his glasses, and then calmly declared. "Rei Ayanami's creation was necessary. The combination of Angel and Human DNA has provided us with invaluable insights, and her hybrid nature should allow her to be a superior Evangelion pilot."

"She's an abomination." I snapped at the man.

"Yes. Rei Ayanami is a necessary abomination, as are the Evangelions themselves. As I'm sure you understand now, I will create as many abominations as I must to accomplish Nerv's purpose." Gendo's eyes narrowed. "Don't try to pretend you wouldn't do the same. That you haven't done the same."

Next thing I knew, the knuckles on my right hand stung a bit, and Gendo had a rapidly forming bruise on his jaw and trickle of blood running down his lip. "Shut up. I'm nothing like you." The hell of it was, I knew that on some level he was right. I wasn't the cold-hearted bastard that Gendo Ikari was, but there were times when I'd gotten downright brutal with my enemies; I knew that I had the capacity to do terrible things if that was what it took to win the day. I'd killed, without mercy or hesitation. Even if I hadn't gone all the way into damnation yet, I'd made my little deal with the devil by working with Lash.

But I wasn't like Gendo. After all, I had compunctions; Gendo never stayed up at night worrying that he might have gone too far. Never worried that he had crossed the line. Never regretted the hard choices he made. I did. That was the difference between us. I had regrets.

Like Susan. I loved her; still did, really. What happened to her was my fault. When the Fellowship of St. Giles came hunting for Bianca, I helped them. After all, the Red Court was weak, shattered, and in disarray, and the chance to get rid of Bianca was too tempting to pass up. I didn't realize until too late that few things are more dangerous than a cornered beast. As far as I know, Susan's still alive, but I haven't seen her since the day she Chicago left with the Fellowship fourteen years ago.

Gendo Ikari didn't feel regret like that. The closest thing he had was how he felt about what happened to Yui, and even that was closer to toxic obsession of self-loathing than actual regret. Gendo slowly turned to face me once more, and readjusted his glasses, which had been knocked askew when I punched him. "Are you satisfied now?"

"Not nearly." I growled back at the bastard.

"But it won't effect your decision to work at Nerv." The calm assurance with which Gendo stated this was utterly infuriating.

"Yeah, stopping the Third Impact's important enough that I'll force myself to put with you." I leaned forward and gave the man a tight smile that carried not a hint of warmth. "But make no mistake, Gendo. We're not friends, we're not even comrades in arms, and once the last Angel goes down, you'll just be another monster on my list." He was pretty close to the top of the list too; right now I wanted to take Gendo down a lot more than I did the likes of Lara Raith or John Marcone.

"That's fine, Mister Dresden." Oddly enough, I'm pretty sure he meant it too. As long as I stuck around long enough to help him get the victory he was aiming for, he didn't really care if he wound up in prison or dead afterwards. "Now then, I believe you need a full briefing on Rei Ayanami." Some degree of shock must have shown on my face, because Gendo gave the barest hint of a smirk as he added. "Giving you a proper briefing will be far less painful for all of us than letting you find the truth on your own after smashing through anything that gets in your way."

Put in that light, I guess it did make sense to just tell me the facts instead. Of course, I wouldn't put it past the bastard to say he was telling me everything while hiding a few of the important little details. "If you'll follow me, Mister. Dresden…"

* * *

Author's Note: As indicated in the story, I'm going with Misato's rank in the Rebuild films rather than the TV series, mostly because Captain seems like kind of a low rank for the kind authority she wields while running battles that will decide the fate of the entire planet. Plus, everyone knows that Colonel is the most inherently badass military rank ever.

Also, I hadn't originally planned to include so much interaction between Harry and Ritsuko. In hindsight though, it does seem rather obvious that a smartass like Harry would get along well with the most sarcastic and snarky character in Evangelion.


	7. Harry VII

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

Moving is always a huge pain in the ass.

I have to admit, I'd gotten to like Chicago over the years. It might not be the best city in the world, but it was home. I'd lived in Chicago for most of my adult life; I had friends, contacts, and enemies that I hadn't gotten around throwing down with yet. And all my things were there.

However, now that 2015 had rolled around things had to change. When I had just been doing consultation and the occasional bit minor spellslinging I could afford to live in Chicago and take the trip through the Nevernever to Tokyo-3 whenever I was needed. Now that the Angels were due to start showing up soon, I couldn't afford that luxury anymore. The Angels, being the sort of inconsiderate things that wanted to wipe out the human race, might not have the decency to give me enough time to make the trip through the Nevernever to Tokyo-3 every time they showed.

So, I was moving. I'd gotten a nice apartment in Tokyo-3; Nerv had even footed the bill to mage-proof it. Still, it wasn't my old basement apartment in Chicago. I'd managed to convert the spare bedrooms into a workable lab/storage, but it was really only good enough for the basic stuff; if I wanted to do any major workings, I'd have to go to my lab at Nerv-HQ. Plus, my new apartment wouldn't have a fireplace, though I suppose the post-Impact eternal summer meant that wasn't a critical issue.

Plus, there was the actual of moving itself. I was taking the most important stuff, like Bob, directly through the Nevernever to Tokyo-3, but it wouldn't really be practical to make multiple trips back and forth to carry stuff like all my binders full of notes on all things magical, my collection of paperbacks, or a lot of the minor magical knickknacks and potion ingredients. All that was getting shipped instead; most of it was either non-magical or not nearly magical enough to cause problems, and getting my things delivered right to my door sounded a lot nicer than hauling it all through the Nevernever one box at a time.

Of course, shipping all of that meant I had to get everything packed up and ready to go first. Lucky for me, I had an apprentice and a brother I could press-gang into helping me. Not so lucky for me, it was a hot day, and Thomas' shirt had gotten so sweaty he decide to just take it off

"Focus, grasshopper." I gave Molly a light whap upside the head as I caught her staring and drooling at my half-brother for the fifth time in the last half-hour.

"Sorry boss." Molly ducked her head down, her hair for once in its natural blonde state. It wasn't really her fault that she was staring; Thomas is a White Court Vampire, and the whole incubus thing means he can pretty much make anything female go ga-ga just from looking at him. Until he'd managed to put on a convincing act of being a flamingly gay hairdresser, he hadn't been able last more than a couple weeks at any job without one of his female co-workers trying to jump his bones.

Needless to say, the sight of a shirtless, sweaty Thomas picking up heavy boxes and loading them into a delivery van had attracted a small harem of women staring at him in glassy-eyed wonder. Bastard. I swear, the guys who make men's deodorant commercials must have been inspired by seeing Thomas walk down the street; I'm sure Thomas has left behind a long string of disappointed girlfriends who had looked at their man, then back to him, then back at their man, then back to him, then realized that, sadly, their man was not Thomas, and could never even smell like Thomas. At least I could get a little mockery mileage out of the fact that Mrs. Spunkelcrief, my little old landlady, was one of his admirers. After all, Thomas had to be at least as creeped out by that as I was.

The only thing that seemed capable of tearing the women's attention away from Thomas was my giant shaggy grey dogosaurus, Mouse. I'd gotten him a while back after a run-in with some flying demon monkeys that tried to kill me with flaming poop at me (don't ask). The big friendly dog had obviously come the conclusion that with half a dozen new people standing around, surely one of them would be in the mood to scratch his ears, and maybe even run his belly at any given moment. So far, he was right; whenever one of the women stopped petting him, he simply moved on to the next one, and after hitting her with the big friendly eyes and a doggy grin he was getting some more quality attention.

After shooting one last annoyed look at Thomas' legion of admirers, I decided he needed to be cut down a peg or two. I waited until he took a break and was halfway through downing a bottle of water before I loudly called out. "Hey, Sparkles, don't start slacking off on me now!"

A second later I got smacked in the head by a well-aimed plastic water bottle. "Dammit Harry! You said you weren't ever going to call me that again!"

"I changed my mind."

Thomas scoffed. "At least I never went to Hogwarts."

I crossed my arms over my chest and shot back. "At least the books about me were good."

Thomas gave a rueful chuckle and lifted up a hand in surrender. In the following silence, both of us heard Molly comment idly. "You know, I actually liked those books."

Thomas and I stared.

"What?" Molly sounded a bit defensive now. "I mean, yeah the plot got a little silly at times, and the romance was creepy and cheesy, and obviously it got a lot of stuff wrong, but they weren't that bad."

Turning my back on Molly dramatically, I solemnly declared. "I have no apprentice."

"So, does that mean I don't have to take care of your apartment and Mister while you're away?" Molly gave an entirely too mischevious grin. "Plus, if I'm not your apprentice anymore, then I can do whatever I want, so there's no way you could stop me from going to Tokyo-3 with –"

"No." I probably came across a bit harsher than I should have, but I definitely did not want Molly showing up on Gendo Ikari's radar.

"So, I guess that means I'm still your apprentice then?" Molly kept her tone light and teasing, but I could see a hint of tension in her eyes. Guess I sounded a bit too angry after all.

"Yeah, finding a new housesitter this late in the game wouldn't work, so I guess I'm stuck with you, even if you are a girly girl who reads girly books and likes girly things." I didn't want Molly showing up within a thousand miles of Tokyo-3. At best, it would mean she would get dragged into working at Nerv alongside me. At worst … well, it was suspiciously convenient how Naoko Akagi suddenly had gone crazy and killed the first Rei and herself as soon as she was done making the Magi and had Ritsuko well enough trained to replace her. I don't know anything for sure, but I could easily see a stone-cold bastard like Gendo bumping Naoko off as soon as he didn't need her anymore and had a good replacement lined up. I'm sure Gendo wouldn't mind having a new Nerv wizard who was a lot younger, more naïve, and easier to manipulate than me.

It kind of bothered me how little I was bothered by the fact that Rei had died. I guess the fact that I hadn't found out about it until a week after it happened, and by then there was already a new Rei running around, did kind of lessen the impact.

We loaded up the last few boxes under the baleful glare of my freakishly large tomcat, Mister. When I paused to load the last few paperbacks into a box with some extra room in it, the cat trotted over, and after gagging a few times hacked a massive hairball onto my right foot. After taking a moment shoot me one last venomous glare, the cat moved back up to his normal perch on top of the bookshelf, and curled up to take a nap of feigned disinterest. Over the last few days, the cat had found several ways to make his disapproval clear over the impending change in his long-established routines clear.

Once I'd gotten the last bits of vomit and soggy cat hair off of my shoe, it was time to load the final few boxes. Once that was done, and I'd double-checked that all my magical gear was stowed away, the only thing left was the hardest thing to do. The goodbyes. I'd already had a farewell dinner with the rest of the Carpenters, and the cops at SI had put together a bit of an impromptu goodbye party and Murphy had even sprung for a cheap cake. I still hadn't said my goodbyes to Thomas though, and since Molly was here I would have to do another set of goodbyes now in addition to the ones she got at her family's house, which really wasn't fair. Double-goodbying was just plain greedy.

"So…" I took the cowards way out, and put off the inevitable. "Thomas, did you get that thing with the Jades worked out?"

Thomas gave a displeased shake of his head. "No, the Jade Court's still pretty pissed off about the whole Colonialism and World War II thing; no reason to risk trouble we don't need."

Naturally, my apprentice had no idea what we were talking about, and said as much.

"Oh, Thomas was talking about stopping by Tokyo-3 sometime while I was over there. Doesn't look like he'll be able to; the Jade Court gets real antsy when vamps from other courts show up in their territory."

"Jade Court?" The grasshopper had a thoughtful frown on her face, no doubt trying to dredge up everything she was supposed to know about them. "Um, I've heard of them, but…"

"Relax kid, they almost never operate outside of East and Southeast Asia, so I wouldn't expect you to know much about them." With a shrug, I admitted. "Truth be told, I don't know much myself; they keep to themselves, but get pissed as hell if you so much as set one toe into their territory or violate their sacred rights."

"Don't forget that they hate the Black Court and White Court for spending a couple centuries stealing their territory and trampling on their sacred rights." Thomas added in cheerfully. "Supposedly, we're at peace now, but I'm still not setting foot in Jade territory without getting permission first, and they're not likely to give it without a very compelling reason."

"Oh, vampire feud. Got it." Molly seemed satisfied by the explanation, but moments later she froze, and then asked. "Wait, didn't you say something about World War II?"

"Oh, yeah. Well, when the human Europeans started taking over chunks of Asia, the European Courts, that's the Whites, and Blacks while they were still around, were doing the same thing. Eventually, the Jades got a firm grip on Japan, and built it up enough to go after all the European colonies. Of course, while the humans were fighting, the Jades were launching a big purge of all the White Court vamps in Asia, and the leftover Black Court ones too. Of course, we did kind of get the last laugh, since we…"

"Wait, you're saying World War II was really – you know what, never mind." Molly let out an annoyed growl, and added under her breath "I don't want a repeat of the Kemmler thing."

"What Kemmler thing?" One of the downsides of hanging around with a vampire is their superhuman hearing that lets them hear all kinds of things that would normally be too quiet to catch.

"Oh, the grasshopper bombed a history test once for saying that World War I was actually caused by a necromancer named Heinrich Kemmler."

"Well it was." Molly grumbled under her breath. "Besides, I wouldn't have mixed my spooky history up with my normal history if _somebody_," Molly paused to shoot a pointed glare at me, "hadn't gotten me into fights with slime golems and a crazy Black Court vampire on a school night."

"To be perfectly fair, running into the vampire was more Thomas' fault than mine." Let he who has never deflected the wrath of an angry woman onto another target cast the first stone.

After about fifteen more minutes of small talk, we finally built up enough courage to properly say our goodbyes.

Mouse was reluctant to leave his admirers behind, since when I called him over he was getting full-on belly rubbing action from a cute little brunette. However, after I called his name again the dog reluctantly rolled over onto his feet, planted a slobbery doggy-kiss on the woman, and then trotted over to me letting out a _whuff _of breath once he was at my side. At least I could bring him with me; I wanted to have someone around to back me up if I ran into some sort of trouble in Tokyo-3, and all things considered Mouse is pretty darn useful at that kind of thing. He was smarter than a normal dog had any right to be, he'd saved my life more than once, and all he asked for in return was for someone to scratch his ears and rub his belly every once in a while and enough kibble to feed a small country.

Molly gave me and the dog a hug, and Mouse let out a small whine and left a trail of dog slobber on her cheek. A couple tears leaked out of Molly's eyes, but she put enough effort into hiding them that I made a point of not noticing. "Sure you don't want me to come with, Boss?"

"Sorry padawn, someone needs to hold down the fort while I'm gone. Don't do anything I wouldn't do." I paused for a moment, and then added. "On second thought, don't do a lot of the things I would do either; you're learning, but you're not quite ready to be punching demons in the face and mouthing off to big nasty critters just yet."

Then it was time to say goodbye to Thomas. After about ten seconds of awkward silence, we settled for a fist bump and an awkward exchange of "Later, man." We're guys; we don't get emotional just because we probably won't see each other again for the better part of a year, and we definitely didn't get a tiny bit choked up while exchanging our brief farewells.

* * *

After a few weeks I'd gotten reasonable settled in at Tokyo-3. The new apartment wasn't bad at all, and since I was in the same building as Misato at least there was one person there I knew. I wasn't the only one just now moving to Tokyo-3; now that the Angels were due to start showing up soon, all the Operations staff, from Misato on down to guy whose job it is to clean up any bits of dog crap that wound up on the Evangelions' feet, were also moving in.

Things at Nerv-HQ had been pretty hectic for the last few weeks, thanks to the massive influx of new Operations staff. I got sent on lost employee tracking duty at least once or twice a day; Nerv-HQ is not very navigation-friendly, and we now had several hundred new employees who were learning their way around. It wouldn't have been that bad if maps were issued or we put up signs with things like "this way to the cafeteria" but apparently the Security guys decided that any sort of navigation aids would be a security risk if the facility were ever attacked. Of course, thanks to Lash's perfect memory I had a mental map of the entire facility anyway, but somehow I never got around to telling Gendo that.

However, by now things had settled down enough that a semblance of normalcy had begun to settle in. The office betting pool on who would get lost next even died out. Sadly, I had been barred from making any money off of it while it was still around, on account of the fact that as the usual lost person finder I might have inside information that would give me an unfair advantage. Oh well; my Nerv paycheck was big enough that it wasn't like I desperately needed to supplement my income with a little bit of office gambling.

About a month after the move to Tokyo-3 all of the top people in Nerv were gathered in Experiment Station 02, except for Misato, who was still hammering the Operations Department into shape. The Station was a fairly simple setup; a single room packed with a bunch of monitoring gear, and a large window that let us look at the prototype Evangelion Unit 00, piloted by Nerv's very own abomination and crime against nature, Rei Ayanami. With the Third Angel due to show up any day now, it was time to finally activate one of the Evangelions. There had been plenty of low-level synchronization and activation tests before now to ensure that the First and Second Children could actually synchronize with their Evangelions, as well as testing out various components and ensuring the AT Field was up and running, but to date we hadn't attempted a full-scale activation.

After all, the cyborg clones of the first two angels were all kinds of dangerous; we weren't about to turn one on until we were absolutely certain nothing could go wrong. Ritsuko Akagi and the technical division had put years into arranging this activation, hunting down every single possible issue, testing and re-testing every single component and every single step of the process. There was no way anything could possibly go wrong.

Sadly, nobody got around to telling the Evangelion that.

As one of the theoretical upper echelon members of Nerv, I was naturally present for the activation of Unit 00. Naturally, I was suppressing any my magic to keep from causing any problems with the equipment, yet I'd still gotten a warning look from Ritsuko as soon as I entered the lab's command station. I swear, you melt someone's computer one time, and it's like you're marked for life. The Harry Dresden Exclusion Line was still there around the Magi too, even though I hadn't caused worse than a minor glitch in anything electronic since I started working at Nerv full-time.

A dozen years spent working on magic suppression and not messing up any high tech did pay off. Of course, if I wasn't working for Nerv I probably could have used the time to learn something cooler, like how to strangle people with my brain and shoot lightning out of my fingers. Or how to play the guitar.

So, I settled into a seat that had a reasonably good view of the massive orange and grey painted Evangelion, and tried to stay out of the way and look serious and intelligent as Ritsuko and the other techs started exchanging a whole lot of technobabble. Something about voltage critical points and pulse flows. It all sounded very impressive, but I had no idea what it meant; I didn't have the technical background to really get all the fine of how the mechanical bits of the Evangelion worked, and hadn't really bothered since the Evangelion was ultimately a mystical/biological construct that could ignore even the simple technical restrictions like its power supply if it really wanted to.

Everything seemed to be going quite smoothly, right up to the point where everything went to hell. "There's an abnormality in the activation system!" One of the techs, I think her name was Maya, called out, a hint of tightly controlled panic entering her voice.

"We also have a problem in Stage 3" Ritsuko sounded calmer, but there was still plenty of tension in her voice. "We are getting signs of internal rejection in the central nerve elements."

"The main transmission system is in flux!" The tightly controlled panic in Maya's voice was starting to sound … not so tightly controlled. "The pulse is reversing! We can't stop it!"

"Aw crap." I succinctly summarized the situation. To make matters worse, all I had on me was my staff and my shield bracelet.

"The plug depth is unstable! It's being drawn further into the Eva!" That part I definitely understood; if the plug went too deep, Rei would end up like Yui Ikari and Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu.

"Abort the contact. Emergency shutdown of all circuits."

"It's no use, the signal isn't getting through!" The Evangelion began to struggle against its restraints, letting out a strangled roar, and finally with a massive heave of its muscles broke completely free. "Unit 00 is out of control!" Maya added rather redundantly, though by now the tech probably wasn't thinking all that clearly through the panic.

I was badly tempted to do something, but I had to force myself to stay calm and not interfere. If I so much as tossed out a single spell, it could fry the computers and destroy any chance of bringing the Evangelion back under control.

"Cut the power." Gendo ordered, sounding no more than vaguely annoyed by the fact that one of the Evangelions was about to go on a rampage.

Moments later the umbilical cable providing the Evangelion with power detached, but the Evangelion wasn't in a helpful mood, and kept moving anyway. Ritsuko declared that Unit 00 had switched to its backup battery system, and I desperately hoped she was right. It had less than a minute of battery power, and within the contained lab it wouldn't be able to do too much damage in that time. If, on the other hand the Evangelion went completely berserk and awakened, we probably wouldn't be able to stop it at all.

Then the Evangelion punched the window of the experiment station. The windows were supposed to be made out of some new sort of bulletproof glass that could survive getting hit by a tank gun. It only took the Evangelion a couple punches to shatter it completely.

The flying glass tore it for me, and I quickly positioned myself to cover as many of the techs as I could, and activated my shield bracelet. Several computer died noisily, but by this point nobody cared, and I kept half a dozen tech from getting carved up by all the flying glass. Gendo had been standing right in front of the window, and hadn't even flinched when the Eva broke the windows. Ritsuko was yelling at him to get back from the window, but the man didn't even seem to notice or care about the hazard of flying glass, even though he'd picked up several minor cuts on his face that were bleeding freely.

I guess that just goes to show that, even if he is a massive bastard, Gendo Ikari does have a gigantic set of brass balls.

Gendo's stoicism broke a few seconds later, when a chunk of the Evangelion's rear armor blew off, and Maya, sitting at one of the computers I hadn't killed when I activated my shield bracelet, announced that the emergency pilot ejection system had been activated. "Shut it down! Now!" The Commander of Nerv yelled.

The out of control Evangelion wasn't about to start listening to us now, and moments later the entry plug launched out Unit 00's back. The jets that normally were supposed to carry the plug clear of the battleground and ensure the pilot's safety instead slammed the plug into testing facility's roof at bone-breaking velocity.

That was when I snapped.

Call me old-fashioned if you want, but I've always had a thing about not wanting to see women or kids get hurt. I'm not a complete Neanderthal or anything, and I've smacked around plenty of female monsters, but I still tend to get a little crazy when I see an innocent woman getting hurt. Rei Ayanami might have been an abomination and a crime against nature, but she was also a 14 year old girl.

"Forzare!" The smell of sulfur filled the room as I cut loose with a Hellfire-enhanced blast at the rogue Evangelion's ankle. The Evangelions might be huge and nigh-indestructible, but with no pilot there was no AT Field to protect it, and at the end of the day it still needed two feet to keep itself standing. When my blast of raw force took the Eva in the ankle it cut the monstrosity's foot out from under it for a brief moment, and the Evangelion fell to its knees, propping its massive bulk up against the wall.

After taking a deep breath to re-center myself and pull out a little more power (I'd put pretty much everything I had into that shot against the Evangelion) I targeted the entry plug. "Hexus." The escape jets cut off before they could do any more harm to the plug or the pilot inside of it. "Vento servitas." I couldn't completely stop several tons of entry plug from plummeting to the ground, but I hoped that the miniature gale I'd called up would at least cushion the fall a little bit.

Once the entry plug hit the ground the Evangelion went still, having never quite gotten back up after I knocked it askew, I did something slightly crazy and jumped out the window. It might bear mentioning that the floor was about 200 feet down from where I was, and I can't fly.

What I can do is fall with style.

A second repetition of "Vento servitas" brought a new gust of wind up right beneath my feet. The updraft made my duster billowed out impressively and served as impromptu parachute, proving once again that not only are dusters fashionable, they're downright practical in my line of work. Between the wind and my duster-airbrake I managed to avoid building up too much momentum, and when I hit the floor I tucked and rolled the rest of it away.

As soon as I was back on my feet, I was running to the entry plug. The plug was still sealed up tight, but I've got a solution for that. "Forzare." This time the spell worked a bit differently, since I was pulling instead of pushing, but the same basic principle applied; force is still force, no matter which way it's going. I didn't open the emergency hatch so much as I ripped it completely off the entry plug. A torrent of hot LCL came pouring out the entry plug, but I had ripped the hatch open from halfway across the room, and by the time I finished crossing the floor to get to the plug itself the LCL had all come out.

The inside of the entry plug was pitch-black; when I'd hexed the escape jets, I'd probably fried all the other electronics in the plug too, including the lights. I pulled out my battered old silver pentacle, one of the few things I'd inherited from my mother, and pushed my will into it, illuminating the dark plug with silver-blue wizard's light.

Rei had clearly taken a beating despite my best efforts to minimize the damage. It was hard to tell exactly how bad it was, since LCL and blood looked pretty similar under the pentacle's light, but her left forearm had an extra bend in it that wasn't supposed to be there, and I'm pretty sure the thin trickle of liquid leaking from her right eye wasn't LCL. "Hey, you alive kid?"

Rei slowly lifted her head to face me, her entire body shaking from that simple effort, and gave a weak nod. I stuck my head out of the hatch, and yelled for a medical team, even though I'm pretty sure one was already on the way. Returning my attention to the wounded pilot, I asked if she could walk. I got another nod, and after taking a few shuddering breaths, the girl tried to rise from the pilot seat, but before she got more than halfway out she fell back into it was a soft gasp of pain.

"Alright, hang on kid, I got you." I was careful to avoid touching her broken arm, though judging by the way she was still shaking and the occasional muffled yelps of pain she gave out the process of getting her out of the plug was still less than pleasant. I was surprised by how little the girl weighed, how small she really was. I'd known ever since I Saw her that despite her origins she was still an ordinary child in some ways, but carrying this scared, hurt little girl to the stretcher really drove that fact home for me.

I gently set the girl down on the stretcher, and took a moment to get the pillow under her head. I could feel Rei's unnervingly intense gaze fixed upon me the entire time, and the one time I actually looked at her face I had to quickly avert my eyes before I got pulled into a soulgaze. Seeing her had been rough enough; I don't even want to think about what I would see if I soulgazed her. "Don't worry Rei, you'll be fine. The docs'll take good care of you." I could feel Rei's gaze fixed on me until the medics finally wheeled her away.

Once the stretcher was on its way to the medical ward, I finally tore my attention away from the wounded girl and noticed that Gendo was on the floor too, and also watching the stretcher leave while idly shooing off a medic who wanted to treat the scratches on his face from all the broken glass. Once the stretcher carrying Rei was out of sight, the man approached me. There were bits of dried blood in the beard he had grown over the last few years, no doubt because of the well-known Evil League of Evil requirement that all evil bastards have evil beards. "Mr. Dresden. Thank –"

"Shut up." I wasn't in the mood to be diplomatic, so instead I shot Gendo the best glare I could manage now that the adrenaline rush of rescuing Rei was starting to wear off. "I didn't do it for you."

* * *

_My host, what exactly do you think you're doing?_

_Buying flowers._

_Those flowers are completely inappropriate for an injured girl in the hospital._

_What wrong with them? _I looked the flowers that had caught my eye over appraisingly. _I think they're pretty, and they smell nice._

_Are you seriously picking flowers solely on the basis of which ones you think are pretty?_

I frowned at the obvious disdain in Lash's voice. _Isn't that how it's supposed to work?_

Several seconds of displeased silence followed, until finally. _You are an idiot, Harry._

Now that Rei was stable enough to receive visitors, I felt like I ought to at least check in on her. Since I was visiting her in the hospital, I thought that getting a few nice flowers might be a good idea as well, which led to my current difference of opinion with Lash.

_Which flowers you choose are incredibly important, Harry. Surely you must be aware of the fact that every flower carries its own symbolic meaning? Choose the wrong flower, and it would be a terrible insult to the girl. Or it could give others the impression that your intentions towards the girl are … less than appropriate._

_Fine, so which flowers would you suggest, oh great and terrible demon princess?_ Why a fallen angel took flowers so seriously, I'll never know.

_If you're going to do something, it should be done properly, my foolish host. _Lash announced haughtily. I made a mental note to be more careful about shielding my surface thoughts from her when we argued; getting into an argument with a woman is bad enough when she can't read your mind. _Now, daffodils seem a good choice; they represent respect and chivalry, and were also believed to have medicinal properties. Be sure to buy several though; a single daffodil is a sign of misfortune. _

_I don't like daffodils, they're too yellow._

_What you like is irrelevant, it's about what is proper._ _However, if the color bothers you so greatly, I'm certain you could arrange for some that have been dyed blue. It's a common enough practice, and won't change the meaning beyond adding an overtone of inspiration and striving to accomplish the impossible. Considering the task ahead of you, not an inappropriate meaning._

So, I bought Rei blue daffodils, and a vase to put them in. They cost more than the flowers I'd wanted to buy in the first place, but the added expense was worth it, if for no other reason than to keep Lash satisfied. When I ignore her advice, even on little things, she sulks, and unlike when she was advising a course of action that would lead to eternal damnation, I figured letting her have her way on the flowers wasn't nearly important enough to have to put up with her being in a mood for the next few days. Since nobody at the hospital seemed shocked or horrified by Lash's choice of flower when I got to the hospital, I guess she gave me good advice after all.

In addition to the broken arm and the eye she nearly lost, Rei had a nasty collection of bruises and some internal injuries, as well as a few nasty gashes. The doctors were optimistic though; it looked like she should make a full recovery in a few weeks' time. I had been a bit worried that The Bastard might decide that was too long and decide to bump her off and activate the third Rei, but that hadn't happened. Maybe even he couldn't lower himself to being that much of a bastard. Or maybe he just knew me well enough to understand that if he pulled something like that I'd decide to forget about putting things off until the Angels were dealt with and take him down right then and there.

"Mr. Dresden." Rei set down the book she had been reading and spoke my name very softly as I entered her hospital room, acknowledging my presence. I was a little surprised by that. Rei's not the talkative type; in fact, it's pretty rare for her to ever just talk to a person, even something as simple as saying hello. Usually, she would only speak in response to a direct question, and more often than not her answer would be as short as possible. Guess I must have made an impression the other day.

"Hello Rei. How're you feeling?" As soon as the words left my mouth I realized it probably wasn't the most sensitive thing to ask, but in my defense it is pretty much the natural default question to ask anybody who is currently in the hospital.

"The pain medication is effective, and I am recovering."

"Oh. That's good." She might be a little more talkative than she had been before, but I still got the feeling that she wasn't going to be much of a conversationalist. "Anyway, you need anything?"

"The hospital staff provide for my needs." The girl answered tonelessly.

"Right. Well, anything you want?" I put a little extra emphasis on the last word.

After a slight pause, the girl repeated. "The hospital staff provides everything I require."

"Oh. Well, good." I held up the vase. "I brought you flowers." I added unnecessarily.

Rei said nothing. Once the silence lasted long enough to be awkward, I set the flowers down on the drawers near the window, where hopefully they would look nice while being out of the way.

In a last, desperate attempt to engage the girl in some way, I spoke up once more. "Well, I was going to loan you one of my old paperbacks so you'd have something to read if you got bored, but it looks like you already have something, so…" I trailed off uncertainly. I couldn't be a smartass with her, all my efforts at chivalry seemed to have bombed, and Rei wasn't giving me anything to work with.

After a brief silence, Rei spoke once more. "The book you brought. What is it?"

"Oh, just a silly fantasy paperback. It's about this shepherd boy named Tavi who – well, I shouldn't spoil it for you." A thought occurred to me. "Um … it's in English, so…"

Rei placed a bookmark in the book she had been reading (which Lash helpfully informed me was some sort of advanced biology text), and extended a hand. "I am proficient in the three primary languages of Nerv."

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised she was trilingual; Rei's entire life revolved around Nerv, so learning the semi-official Nerv languages of Japanese, English, and German made sense. Of course, given the way Rei usually worked, I wouldn't be surprised if she was only reading-proficient; considering how little she spoke her native language, I doubt she spent any time practicing speaking a foreign one.

I placed the paperback in Rei's extended hand, and remained silent as she looked the cover of the book over appraisingly. "You can just return it once you're done. It's actually the first book in a series, so if you like it I can give you the next one after it if you want."

Rei nodded.

"So … I'll stop by again sometime, make sure you're still doing alright?"

Rei nodded again.

Hesitantly, I turned towards the door. After her initial greeting I'd hoped I might actually be able to have a semi-normal conversation with the girl, but it looked like she was still as non-communicative as ever. It's not like saving her life made her obligated to suddenly become my friend or anything, but I had hoped that maybe I could get along with her a little bit better now. Hells bells, as far as I knew the only person the girl said more than two words to was Gendo, and that was no way to live.

I was so bummed out about my apparent failure to have a conversation with Rei that I almost missed what she softly whispered; I'm not even sure if she had actually meant to say it loudly enough for me to hear. "Thank you."

I left the hospital with a smile on my face.


	8. Harry VIII

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

The Third Angel was big; even from more than a mile away, I could tell that easily. It towered over most of the buildings in Tokyo-3, though that's not as impressive as it might seem since all the really big skyscrapers retracted underground when the city went into fortress mode. Still, the fact that a ten-story office building I was standing on top of would barely come up to the thing's knees was a bit humbling; little ordinary human me was probably about as big as it's little toe.

And I was going to try and fight it.

"This is an extremely foolish idea, my host." The illusionary form of Lash stood slightly off to the side, glaring at me with her arms folded across her chest. "It is extremely likely to get you, and more importantly myself, killed while accomplishing absolutely nothing."

"Your objection is noted and overruled." To be fair, I had brewed up an escape potion for just in case I was out of my league. I might be crazy, but I'm not an idiot.

"Surely, there must be a better to evaluate the capabilities of these creatures than to simply walk up to one and hit it as hard as you can."

"It was that or poke it with a stick, and I couldn't find a big enough stick to poke it with. What can I say, I'm a simple guy, and I like simple plans. Maybe if I punch in the Angel hard enough –"

"That thing is not an Angel!" Lash snapped. "The code name Nerv assigned to it is also inappropriate. I knew Sachiel, my host, and that is not Sachiel. This creature is nothing like Sachiel. The only thing that it has in common with Sachiel is that it shares his capacity for annoying me. I never could stand Cherubim. However, you will note that this creature does not have four wings, and only possesses a single head. Thus it is not one of the Cherubim."

"Trust an Angel to know about Angels. Then again, I suppose that technically you're not an angel any more, are you demon girl?"

"You are less amusing than you think you are. Now as I was saying before someone decided to interject with his so-called witicisms, that creature does not in any way merit the term Angel. You will note, for example, that it has absolutely no traits in common with the real Angels, such as –"

"Well, according to Bob the AT Field is a little bit like Soulfire, so…"

"**It is not an Angel**!" Hellfire burned within Lash's eyes, and I could practically feel the air vibrating from the force of her anger.

"Alright! Alright! It's not an Angel." I'm no expert when it comes to the ladies, but even I'm smart enough to realize that sometimes the only course of action that won't get you in trouble is nodding and agreeing. "So, any advice on how to destroy the Third … Thingie?"

"I will assume that despite your imprecise wording, you want advice on how to destroy the Third Creature. After all, you would hardly need my advice to destroy the Third Child." Well, if Lash was snarking at me again at least she wasn't pissed off about me calling the creature attacking Tokyo-3 an Angel. "Now, I would personally advise returning to the Geofront and allowing the Evangelions to deal with them, as has always been Nerv's intention."

"That would be a great plan, except Misato hasn't gotten back with the Third Child yet, so we don't have anybody who can pilot the Evangelion."

"And you, for some reason, expect that you will be more successful at delaying the Angel than than UN Armed Forces were. Do you think you will be able to significantly harm a creature that was only mildly annoyed when the UN hit it with a N2 bomb? This is foolishness."

"We have something they don't. Since the AT Field is kind of like Soulfire, the Hellfire-enhanced magic you have so graciously given me the ability to use might be able to get through the field and hurt the creature." I might have been laying the flattery on a little thick towards the end, but considering the fact that mentioning the similarity between the AT Field and Soulfire involved getting way too close to Lash's apparent berserk button of saying the Angels were like actual Angels, I figured feeding her ego a bit might keep her in a more cooperative mood.

"It is possible." Lash conceded. "However, even if the use of Hellfire does allow you to break through the Creature's AT Field, you do not have sufficient strength to engage it in battle." The illusionary form of Lash standing beside me couldn't quite stop herself from smirking as she added. "Of course, if you were to take up the coin, it would allow you access to considerably more power. At that point, you might be capable of destroying this creature."

"Yeah, no thanks. I like my soul where it is."

"As you wish." Lash seemed to casually shrug my refusal away; it's not like I haven't turned her 'power at the cost of eternal damnation' offer down a couple hundred times before now. However, she couldn't resist tossing out one last parting shot. "When you have failed, assuming you survive, you can simply sit back and watch while Gendo sends a fourteen year old child into battle. Which one do you think will be killed first? The critically injured girl, or the completely inexperienced boy?"

Damn. One of the downsides of having someone like Lash hanging around in your brain for the last decade or so was that she gotten to know me well enough to know exactly what buttons to hit in order to inflict maximum pain. The fact that Nerv had to use child soldiers to pilot the Evangelions was not something I was happy about, but test after test had shown that the children born within a year or two of the Second Impact achieved far better synchronization ratios. There were a lot of theories as to why, usually centered around the idea that the Impact had included some type of Angelic fallout that made children conceived and born around the time it happened just a little bit different.

Just because I understood why we had to use kids to pilot the Evangelions didn't mean I had to like it, though. I have to admit, Lash had played her hand well. If taking up a Blackened Denarius would allow me to take down the Angels, then Nerv wouldn't need its child soldiers. That was a damned compelling argument in favor of taking up the coin. I'll admit, it was probably the closest she'd gotten to convincing me to take up the coin in years; the last time I'd even been remotely temped was during my second run-in with Nicodemus and the other Denarians. When Michael got shot up and nearly died, the promise of getting the power to punish the people who hurt him had sounded real nice.

However, as tempting as it was to grab that power, I knew no good would ever come of taking up Lasciel's coin, even I was doing it for a good reason. For starters, there was no guarantee that I couldn't manage without it; these so-called Angels were tough, but I've gone up against plenty of tough things that were stronger than me, and come out ahead. Plus, I'd seen how the Denarii turned a lot of the people who took them up into murderous tardbeasts; for every Denarian like Nicodemus and Tessa who was still in command of themselves, there were several like Magog and Ursiel that were little better than animals under the control of their Fallen. Even if I could stay in control of myself after going Denarian, I'd probably end up growing a goatee and spouting clichéd villain dialogue within days of taking up the coin. Stars and stones, given the usual Denarian outlook, I'd probably decide to help the Angels along so the Third Impact could kill off a couple billion more people.

I repeated my refusal to take up the coin. Lash seemed to take the loss in stride. "No matter. We both know it's only a matter of time before it happens." The smile Lash shot my way was decidedly dangerous. "With the life you live, it's only a matter of time. One day, you'll be pushed to the edge, in a situation where you don't have enough strength to win on your own, yet you can't afford to pay the price of failure. When that day comes, you will seek me out and I will give you the power you ask for." Content with having gotten the last word in, Lash's illusion winked out of existence.

I hate to admit it, but her words had shaken me. Mostly because I was afraid she might be right.

Oh well. I could have an existential moral crisis later; right now it was time to see if I could kill me an Angel. I knew from the incident with Unit 00 that if the AT Field could be dealt with and I threw everything I had into one big punch, I might be able to hit it hard enough to do some damage. Luckily, not-Sachiel's Core was right out in the open in the middle of its chest, so it should be a relatively simple thing to attack its weak point for massive damage. In theory.

I gathered my will, and started pulling in every scrap of magical power I could manage. I was only going to get one shot at this, so I had to make sure I hit it as hard as I possibly could. On the bright side, the Angel was not likely at all to notice a tiny little speck of a human over a mile away from it, so I had all the time I needed to supercharge my spell and make sure it would be absolutely perfect. When it got the point where I felt like my head was about to split right open and my body was about to burst into flames from the sheer amount of magical energy I'd pulled in, I finally unleashed it.

"Fuego!" The putrid, rotten egg stench of Hellfire flooded my nostrils as I unleashed the massive blast of fire. I tried to control the fire as much as I could, but there was far too much fire for me to do more than point it in the Angel's direction. That's the thing with fire; you usually have to spend as much effort controlling it as you do calling it up. Since I'd focused on putting as much power as I could into the spell, there was no way I could keep that much fire tightly contained. Then again, considering how big the Angel was, I didn't really need to keep it that focused anyway. In fact, letting the fire blast spread out a bit before it hit was probably a good thing.

Unfortunately for me, the massive fireball wasn't looking nearly so big by the time it had crossed the mile or so of space separating me from the Angel, and was right up next to the huge thing. The good news was, it looked like Hellfire did work against the AT Field; when the firestorm hit the AT Field, it slowly pushed its way through, as if the field had the consistency of molasses. The bad news was, the delay as the fireball pushed through the AT Field gave the Angel plenty of time to shield its core with an arm. The arm got scorched, but the core was intact, and within seconds the arm regenerated what little damage I managed to inflict.

The Third Angel's eyes flashed.

I somehow managed to drag up enough power to activate my shield bracelet. The next few seconds were confused; there was a blinding flash of light, huge impact against my shield, a sensation of flying, and then a series of impacts against several different parts of my shield.

It took me a bit to realize what exactly had happened. The first question that sprang to mind was why I was lying in the middle of the street. Then I wondered why there was a giant pink cross of fire shooting into the sky about a dozen blocks down the street from where I was. If the Angel was going to hit me back, why blast something so far away from me?

About the time the shock wore off and the pain hit, I realized that the Angel hadn't missed; the blast had just knocked me that far away. From what I could tell from the pain, I didn't have any particularly critical injuries, just a horrible bone-deep ache all over my body. At least, judging by the lack of any follow-up attacks, the Angel seemed satisfied that its first shot had dealt with me; considering my current state, I was definitely out the fight for a while. "Ugh. Lash. I think I hurt my … everything."

_I told you it was a bad idea._ If not for the fact that right then I was in far too much pain to care, I probably would have been annoyed by how smug she sounded. _At least you're still alive; for a time, I was afraid you might perish. Since my existence is connected to your life, that would be unfortunate._

"That's great." Between the exhaustion of attacking the Angel, defending myself against its counter, and then getting smacked around like a rag doll, I probably wasn't at my most coherent. "Think I'm gonna lie down for a bit and think about how much pain I'm in. 'kay?"

I proceeded to do exactly that for an indeterminate amount of time. Lash tried to prod me into getting up and moving to shelter a few times, but she didn't get much in the way of results, and the sound her yelling at me wasn't helping my headache in the slightest. After all, getting up would require movement, and right now moving did not sound like it would be fun at all.

It wasn't until I felt a pair of tiny hands shaking my shoulder that I finally started to regain my senses. "Za Lord! My liege!"

"Wha?" I made an effort to shake the cobwebs out of my head, and then turned my head to find out who was bothering me now. Little faerie stood about fifteen inches tall, and looked like a miniature version of one of the Sidhe, except for the four dragonfly-like wings sprouting from his back. He had also somehow gotten his hands on a perfect replica of a Nerv uniform in his size, though there was obviously a hole in the back to accommodate his wings.

"Major General Toot-toot Minimus of the Za Guard reporting for duty, my liege." The Faerie snapped to attention and saluted, which looked silly enough that I would have laughed at it if not for the fact that I knew Toot took his role as leader of the Za Guard very seriously.

"At ease, soldier."

Toot dropped the salute. "My liege, you asked me to report to you when the Third Child has reached the Geofront. So … um … well he's there."

"Good work, Toot. I'll pay you and the rest of the Za Guard tomorrow." I was a little surprised when the collection of several hundred Little Folk that comprised the Za Guard followed me to Tokyo-3, but I really shouldn't have been. For creatures of the Nevernever physical distance wasn't a big deal, and apparently, you could win the undying loyalty of the Little Folk simply by regularly supplying them with pizza. Little things like freeing a couple hundred of them in the aftermath of that coup attempt in the White Court a few years back had probably helped too. Lucky for me, Nerv employed more than enough workaholic scientists to support a couple pizza shops, so I could keep the Za Guard paid. As far as I was concerned, the Japanese put some really weird stuff on their pizzas, but judging by how quickly the pizzas disappeared into the faeries' surprisingly large gullets the Za Guard didn't seem to mind.

I was still feeling a little fuzzy from getting smacked around by the Angel, but the report from Toot managed to focus me enough to rebuild something that resembled a human thought process. I was still in a lot of pain, but I've dealt with pain before. Now that my head was a bit clearer, I could focus on the techniques I knew to deal with it. I could've just asked Lash to play around with my perceptions and take away the pain completely, but while being completely pain free would be a nice relief, it would also be dangerous. Pain exists for a reason, and getting rid of it would make it way to easy for me to seriously hurt myself without realizing it. I might have escaped serious injury for the moment, but after the hits I had taken it would be easy to seriously aggravate my wounds without realizing it.

Walking back to the Geofront would not have been a quick or pleasant experience in my current condition. Lucky for me, part of being a wizard involves being prepared for situations like this. Technically, the potion I'd thrown together a couple hours ago had been meant to help me escape from the Angel if it was too tough for me to fight. Obviously, the Angel hit back way too hard and fast for me to use it, but now I could use it to take a shortcut back to the Geofront.

The potion tasted like flat cola, probably because that's what a large portion of it was made out of. Because of the unique geography of Tokyo-3 and the nature of the Angels, I'd opted for something a little different from my normal escape potion. Teleporting a dozen blocks away worked great for getting away from human-sized baddies, but it wouldn't do me much good against a pissed-off Angel.

So, instead of the usual sensation of my body scattering into thousands of little pieces and flying through the wind to reform elsewhere, when I downed this potion my body melted. A few gallons of liquid Harry seeped into streets of Tokyo-3, through layers of concrete and around thickened armor plates, until finally pouring into the Geofront itself. My liquefied body trickled down from the roof, dropping almost a kilometer to Geofront's floor.

That was the handy thing about Tokyo-3; the massive underground complex beneath it meant that I could easily escape anything nasty on the surface by just going straight down. Of course, the vertical nature of the city did create problems as well as advantages. For example the massive underground chamber would play merry hell with just about any attempt to use earth magic; I only knew a bit of earth magic, but the spells I knew were pretty handy, and not being able to safely use them was an annoyance. My gravity enhancing spell might have had more luck against the Angel, since it couldn't be blocked like fire or force, but enhanced gravity would also rip a hole into the Geofront's roof. If the Angel survived, I would've just helped it get past most of our defenses. That would be bad.

Once all of the Liquid Dresden reached the bottom of the Geofront, the various bits of me slowly gathered back together, and my body reformed. Apparently, this all happened right in front of one our internal security people, since the guy was gawking at me with the sort of stunned deer-in-the-headlights expression I usually associate with someone who doesn't believe in magic witnessing me in the act of tossing around some mojo. I'd been getting a lot of those looks ever since my little rescue of Rei a couple days back. Slapping on a very bad fake Austrian accent, I declared. "I'll be back."

The guard pointed at me and let out a strangled gurgle of inarticulate shock. I get that reaction a lot. I blame the fact that the last two movies in the series weren't that great.

Before I could come up with another smartassed thing to say, a tremor struck the Geofront. Oh yeah; for a minute there, I'd almost forgotten that the city was kind of under attack by a giant monster. I went running for the cages; I wasn't sure what I would actually be able to do once I got there, but at least I would know what was going on, and there was always a chance that I might be able to add in some critical insight that would turn the tide of the battle.

The Geofront took several more hits while I was on my way to the command center. Right as I was stepping through the door, we took a really big hit, and the tremors this time were bad enough that if I hadn't grabbed onto the doorframe I would have been pitched down onto my ass. Once the tremor passed, I properly stepped into the commander center.

Right now, only Gendo the Bastard and a few the bridge bunnies were here; Misato and Ritsuko were still down in the cage with Unit 01. However, the two things that immediately caught my attention were Shinji Ikari, and the fact that he was currently holding onto Rei Ayanami, who was supposed to still be in her hospital bed rather than down here in the cages. The boy stared at the girl for a few seconds, then looked up, met Gendo's eyes, and announced. "Fine, I'll do it. I'll be your pilot."

I might not be a genius, but it didn't take me long to piece together what had happened. If not for the fact that losing my temper would have blown up a lot of the equipment we really needed for the upcoming battle against the Third Angel, I probably would have torn into Gendo then and there. Obviously, something of my thoughts must have been showing on my face because Gendo faced me with that blank, empty stare of his, and calmly declared. "Shinji refused to pilot Unit 01. Rei's involvement was necessary."

Under the kind of cold bastard logic Gendo Ikari worked under, it made sense. Shinji was probably way too freaked out by the entire situation to voluntarily agree to pilot the Evangelion just because someone asked him to, and trying to explain everything to him would take way too long and probably just leave the kid even more overwhelmed than he already was. So, instead Gendo presented Shinji with a real simple choice; 'pilot the Evangelion, or I'll send this horribly injured girl in your place.' Like any decent, non-Gendo human being, Shinji wouldn't accept letting someone in Rei's condition take his place in the coming battle.

And Gendo had exploited that basic human decency in order to get Shinji to do what he wanted. "You really are a bastard."

Gendo adjusted his glasses, but otherwise gave no reaction. "If her condition is so important to you, perhaps you should exercise your concern by seeing to it that she is returned to the medical ward?"

I went along with his suggestion, partly because I wanted to make sure Rei was alright, but mostly because if I'd stayed in the command center with him any longer my temper might have frayed to the breaking point. Magic comes from your emotions, so a lot of my magic suppression tricks stopped working if I got really emotional; I probably would have already killed a computer or two if not for the fact that getting curbstomped by the Third Angel had already left me pretty close to tapped out.

It would have been nice if I could just magic Rei's injuries away, but that's not how things work. Don't get me wrong, you can do some really impressive medical treatments with magic, but just like with normal medicine that's a highly specialized field. Whether you're fixing people with science or magic, you still need to know a lot about how the human body works in order to fix it. Listens-To-Wind, a friend of Ebenezar McCoy's and a member of Senior Council, actually put himself through medical school every decade or so to keep up to date.

By the time I got down to the ground floor Shinji was still holding onto Rei while a pair of medics were getting the gurney they'd brought Rei in on set back up. I didn't want to get in the way of the medical guys, so instead I went up to Shinji and Rei, dropped down onto my knees next to him, and carefully moved his hands away before picking the girl up. I flinched when she gave a soft yelp of pain, but a moment later her one uncovered eye turned about and once she saw me she seemed to relax slightly, and I once again had to quickly shift my eyes to avoid a soulgaze.

I had her safely back on the gurney before Shinji finally spoke up. "Is … is she going to be alright?" As soon as the words left Shinji's mouth, Rei's attention shifted from me to him, though she still remained silent. For his part, Shinji flinched away from her gaze, and looked guiltily down at his hands. I noticed a bit of blood on them, almost certainly Rei's.

"Yeah." I tried to sound more confident and less worried than I really was. I knew that there was no medical reason to be worried, but I'll admit that after the whole rescue thing I had a bit of a soft spot for Rei. "Nerv has some of the best medical gear and people money can buy; they'll take good care of her."

"Oh. Good." Either I wasn't very good at sounding reassuring, or Shinji wasn't the sort of guy who was easily reassured. Probably a bit of both; my dog has better people skills than I do, and with what I knew of Shinji from my occasional checking up on him he wasn't exactly brimming with confidence or self-assuredness.

I'm not exactly proud of what I did next, but if Shinji was going to be piloting the Evangelion he needed to be focused on fighting. "Of course, the docs won't be able to help her if nobody that Angel." After taking a moment to mull that over, Shinji nodded, and he looked a little less nervous. A moment later Ritsuko called him over to start prepping him for the launch, but as he left he shot one last look over his shoulder at Rei.

Emotions can be a powerful thing. Shinji had agreed to pilot the Evangelion to keep Rei from going in his place, so obviously he wanted to protect her on some level. Reminding him of that might let him convert his worrying into an extra bit of willpower. Since the kid didn't have a lick of training, he was going to be fighting pretty much on pure guts. With that fact in mind, anything that gave him an extra bit of determination was worth it.

The fact that the kid seemed to have a protective instinct towards Rei was interesting. Considering the state she was in it might have just been basic human decency, but it was hard not to wonder if on some subconscious level he recognized that he and Rei were somehow related. After all, Thomas and I had gotten along pretty well even before I found out he was my brother, so it wasn't that outlandish to think that some part of Shinji might recognize that Rei was his mother's half-alien clone abomination thing. Hell's bells, if he grew his hair out and dyed it blue they'd practically be twins.

I went back to the hospital ward along with Rei and medics, just in case we ran into any trouble on the way, but since I was actually ready for something to go wrong it all went smoothly. Once Rei was settled, I headed back to the cages, and took my position in command center next to Gendo and Fuyutsuki; I didn't particularly like being stuck that close to the Bastard, but his position did give a nice overview of the command center, and kept a bit of distance between me and the tech.

In the time it had taken me to get Rei back to safety, Shinji had been prepped about as well as they could reasonably hope to manage for piloting given how much time we had to work with. The kid didn't even have a plugsuit; in theory we should have been able to slap him into one of Rei's spares, but when they tried the suit didn't seal properly. It's probably just as well; the kid would have enough self-confidence issues without making him fight the Angels in a plugsuit that was very clearly designed to accommodate female anatomy.

Even without the benefit of a plugsuit, Shinji managed to pull off a synchronization of 41% with Unit 01. That was impressive as hell; it had taken Rei seven months of training to start putting up those kinds of numbers, and that was with the benefit of a plugsuit. Some of Shinji's performance was probably down to improvements on Nerv's end of things; we had pretty much been shooting in the dark when we first got started with the Rei and the Second Child over in Germany. By now, we kinda-sorta almost knew what we were doing.

Still, even taking that into account, the kid had a great synch score. Maybe he was some sort of naturally talented Evangelion prodigy? The mood throughout the command center had gone up considerably as soon as Maya announced his synchronization score. Putting a completely untrained kid into the Evangelion stank of desperation, but now it looked like it just might work after all.

Unit 01 launched up to the surface of Tokyo-3 to face the Angel, and took about two steps before it fell flat on its face.

It would have been funny, if not for the fact that we were all counting on Shinji to save our asses.

"Do we have a backup plan?"

"Putting Shinji in Unit 01 was the backup plan." Fuyutsuki was good at keeping a cool head under pressure, but he was holding himself pretty stiffly; at least I wasn't the only one who was a little worried about our impending demise.

"He will win." Gendo answered in his cold detached bastard voice, though he kept his voice low enough that it wouldn't carry past the three of us. "Yui will not allow her child to die."

"So what, the plan is to just throw the kid out there, and hope that if the Angel clobbers him enough Unit 01 will go berserk in time to keep him from getting killed?"

Fuyutsuki shifted slightly, and his posture stiffened a bit more. Gendo, on the other hand, didn't seem to have been effected by my summary of his plan. However there was bit of bite to his tone when he spoke. "If you know of another means to defeat this Angel, Mister Dresden, then by all means, enlighten us."

I fell silent. I hate it when the Bastard has a point.

Forcing myself to just stand there and watch the battle was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Every instinct I had told me the run out there and rescue Shinji from the battle, which was really little more than him just getting pounded over and over by the Angel. However, as much as my heart told me to save him, my head knew it wouldn't work. The Third Impact would kill him just as surely as the Angel would, and a couple billion more people in the bargain.

I don't know how I managed to keep in position even after the Angel had broken one of Unit 01's arms and slammed its energy lance straight through one of Unit 01's eyes. That was when everything really went to hell. Maya and Ritsuko were exchanging lots of frantic, worried sounding technobabble, but I definitely caught it when Maya declared that the pulse was reversing. I remembered that from the startup test with Unit 00 just a few days ago.

"Try to stop it." Ritsuko ordered.

"No good! It's rejecting the signal, we're locked out!"

"What about the pilot?" Misato demanded.

"Sensors are dead, condition unknown." One of the other member of the command staff, I think his name was Hyuga, declared. "Unit 01 has completely shut down!"

Misato bowed her head for moment, and then announced. "We're aborting the mission! Pilot safety is our top priority. Eject the plug, get him out of there now!"

"It's no use, all our links with the Eva are down!"

The only reason I wasn't halfway through trying to rush up to the surface and save Shinji by myself was because I knew what Gendo's plan was, and before we'd lost sensors it looked like it might have been working. We'd bet everything on Unit 01 going berserk, and it was too late to back out now.

Sure enough, the light returned to Unit 01's sole remaining eye. "Unit 01 has reactivated." One of the other techs announced.

Unit 01 let out a deep, massive roar, and leapt toward the Angel. Gendo stayed as cool as ever, but Fuyutsuki seemed to relax just the slightest bit as he quietly declared. "We've won."

The unleashed power of the berserk Evangelion is probably one of the scarier things I've seen in my life. The Third Angel had torn its way through the UN Army, shrugged off an N2 bomb, and slapped aside every bit of power I could throw at it.

Unit 01 smacked it around like a football captain going after a nerd's lunch money.

The Third Angel hit it with another one of its cross-shaped blasts, and one that looked a lot stronger than the one that took me out of the fight at that. It bounced right off of Unit 01. The Evangelion healed it's broken arm, tore through the Angel's AT field with contemptuous ease, and shattered both the Angel's arms in retribution.

After a minute more of the no holds barred beatdown, the Third Angel finally gave up, and self-destructed in a last-ditch effort to take the Evangelion down. It had no more effect than any of the Angel's other efforts to harm the berserk Unit 01.

Everyone in the command center was staring at the screen in mute shock at the Evangelion's unleashed fury. I think what I said next was a pretty good summary of everyone in the room, with exception of Gendo, was thinking.

"Holy shit!"

* * *

Notes: I have been reading through the Dresden books off-and-on whenever I needed to check some canon fact, and I noticed that in _Death Masks_ Mac speaks Japanese. I now feel somewhat obligated to find a way to use this fact.

Also, while this shouldn't be too much of a surprise for dedicated Dresdenites, the impending release of _Ghost Story_ is likely to result in a bit of a delay before my next update.


	9. Harry IX

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

Gendo Ikari's office is designed to impress and intimidate.

For starters, his office is ridiculously large. If the space was actually being used it might be practical, but instead it was just a huge empty room with a simple desk located at the far end. There was also a subtle vertical slope to the office; the size made it barely noticeable, but the floor under Gendo's desk several inches higher than the door. The bare austerity of the room left you with nothing else to look at but the Bastard himself, and even the lighting served to emphasize the figure Gendo Ikari, sitting at his desk. The only embellishment was the sephirot carved into the floor of his office, though since I'm pretty sure Gendo wasn't Jewish it was probably just there to look really impressive and quasi-mystical.

Gendo seemed comfortably seated at his desk, while Fuyutsuki stood in his usual position at Gendo's right hand. Ritsuko and I had to make due with simple chairs. Gendo had his face concealed behind his clasped hands in what I had long since dubbed the Gendo Pose. Since the chairs provided for us had armrests, I decided to take advantage of them to place myself in the Gendo Pose as well. Gendo gave noreaction to this, and Fuyutsuki was too much the professional to do so, but I saw the corner or Ritsuko's mouth twitch upwards in a brief smirk.

The four of us constituted what I liked to think of as 'the secret committee of people who actually know what the hell is really going on at Nerv.' The name probably wasn't accurate since Gendo was almost certainly holding a few of his secrets back from us, but we were still a lot better informed than the average low-level technicians who thought Evangelions were giant robots and Rei was just a weird and socially awkward but otherwise normal girl.

I'm not sure why Gendo liked to call the four of us together every once in a while to discuss the various goings-on of Nerv. If he were someone else, it could be seen as soliciting our opinions as a part of his decision-making process, but I doubt Gendo Ikari is the kind of guy who needs to hear what other people think before he makes up his mind. Maybe he liked to take the pulse of his subordinates every once in a while. Who knows, maybe every once in a while one of us actually made a good point and he decided to listen to our opinions after all. Or maybe he just saw it as another way to remind us of who was in control of Nerv.

Whatever his motives, the latest meeting of our little unofficial committee, called in the aftermath of the battle with the Third Angel was close to done. Gendo and Fuyutsuki needed to deliver a briefing to our theoretical Seele overlords, Ritsuko needed to go inflict some science on whatever was left of the the Angel, and I was pretty much running on fumes and a little leftover adrenaline from the fight against the Third Angel.

"Now, unless there are any other matters, I believe that concludes our business." Gendo managed to make what would normally sound like an invitation for last-minute questions into a dismissal.

"Actually, Commander, there is one other matter I was hoping to discuss." Nobody seemed all that surprised when Ritsuko spoke up, though I noticed Gendo shift slightly to bring the full intensity of his gaze to bear on Ritsuko. I've long suspected that Rei's unnerving habit of looking at people a bit too intensely is something she picked up from Gendo. The man had practically raised her, after all.

"What is it, Doctor Akagi?" I'm pretty sure Gendo knew damn well exactly what it was, but making people answer questions was another one of those little power plays of his. Once more, it reinforced the fact that he was the boss, and you were the subordinate.

"The matter of Lieutenant Colonel Katsuragi, sir." Seven years of working alongside Gendo, not to mention some of the other things I'd learned they were up to from Toot-toot and the Za Guard, had rendered Ritsuko largely immune to Gendo's tricks. "I still think that it would be in Nerv's interests to provide her with a less redacted account of Nerv's capabilities. When I last raised the matter, you agreed to revisit it once Misato had proven herself in battle. I believe her performance against the Third Angel provided ample proof of her capabilities."

"Are you certain your judgment is objective, Doctor Akagi?" Fuyutsuki almost always questioned any proposal Ritsuko or I made, not necessarily out of opposition, but simply to see if our position could stand up to a bit of scrutiny. Of course, that also let Gendo preserve his position as the objective leader; by not engaging in the debate directly, he both kept himself elevated above the rest of us, and ensured that whenever he made his final ruling, it would be accepted as the word of the commander rather than being a topic that was open for debate and discussion. It was a trick that might have impressed me, if the Merlin of the White Council hadn't use the same tactic on me a couple times in the past.

"I believe that my association with Lt. Colonel Katsuragi does not compromise my judgment in regards to her capabilities and trustworthiness." Ritsuko answered calmly. "If anything, the fact that I know her so well makes me well-qualified to judge how best to utilize her skills."

"And how exactly do you think Nerv would benefit from increasing the Lt. Colonel's security clearance?"

"The Operations Director needs to know as much as possible about the tools at her disposal and the factors which might affect the coming battles." I cut in smoothly. "The knowledge that Lilith and Terminal Dogma are the ultimate objective of the Angels is tactically significant." I saw Ritsuko give a slight nod in my direction; the fact that I had backed her up on this matter had been noted.

"What of Katsuragi's personal history with the Angels?"

"Misato is a professional soldier; she knows how to keep her personal feelings off of the battlefield."

Fuyutsuki gave a slight nod. "I see. Exactly how much do you believe Lt. Colonel Katsuragi should be informed of, Dr. Akagi?"

"I see no reason to hold back any tactically pertinent information."

"Lt. Colonel Katsuragi is not to be informed of any information pertaining to Rei Ayanami." Gendo spoke from on high. "However, now that she has proven herself in battle, she may be briefed on the pertinent details concerning Lilith and Project E." Ritsuko smiled, and gave a slight nod before thanking the Bastard, while Fuyutsuki simply accepted Gendo's ruling with customary professional stoicism.

I was fairly happy with how the meeting had gone as well. In honesty I didn't mind keeping Misato in the dark about Rei; knowing about Rei's nature and origins would have an effect on Misato's command decisions, but not in a way I was comfortable thinking about. Misato was one of the better morally grounded people in Nerv's upper ranks, but once she knew Rei was a replaceable clone it would be hard not to see her as a bit more expendable than the other pilots. Not that Misato would use her as cannon fodder or anything, but if it came down to a 'lose Rei or lose one of the other Children' situation … well it would be hard not to take Rei's nature into account.

Gendo left the details of bringing Misato up to speed on the chosen portions of Nerv's secrets to Ritsuko, and the meeting broke up. As tired as I was, the drive back to my apartment seemed to take way too long. I still hadn't quite gotten used to the Green Beetle; it was a passable substitute for the Blue Beetle, and just about as old so I didn't have problems with it, but it hadn't acquired the character of the Blue Beetle yet. It seemed a bit odd to buy a car just to use in Japan, but buying a second old Volkswagen was a lot cheaper than the cost of shipping the Blue Beetle to Japan and back.

By the time I got back to my apartment, the prospect of imminent sleep was far too tempting to resist. I had done a passable job decorating my new apartment to match the old one; it wasn't fancy, but I had comfortable carpets, comfortable couches, and a bookshelf that had somehow managed to already become a bulging, disorganized mess in the month since I'd moved in. More importantly at this moment, my apartment also had a really comfortable bed.

The large mass of shaggy grey fur that was Mouse let out an eager whuff of breath as he rose up from his favorite spot on the carpet and walked over to greet me. With a bit of annoyance, I noticed that the dog also had his leash in his mouth, and once I finished scratching his ears the dog shot a glance at the door. With a sigh, I took the slightly slobbery leash from Mouse, and clipped it to the dog's collar. "I know you're too smart for your own good, so if you can open and close doors why can't you figure out how to use a toilet?"

Being the nice and easygoing fellow that he was, Mouse let my sour mood slide right off his back without bothering him in the slightest. I took the dog out, and after a bit of searching he found some suitable places to do his business. Even though I got the feeling that the dog was trying to move things along at a quicker pace than usual, it still took a good five minutes that I could have spent getting more closely acquainted with my pillow.

With that last matter attended to, I could finally get my much-needed sleep. As happens all too often when I get the rare experience of actually having something pleasant to look forward to, I was promptly interrupted. "Harry, there is a matter we should discuss."

I groaned, and shot an annoyed glare at Lash, who had placed herself on one of the sofas in my living room. "Really? It can wait until after I've slept."

"With respect, my host, I think it would be best to discuss this matter now."

"Fine." I growled. I'm a wizard; I'm allowed to be grouchy. "You have five minutes."

"Thank you my host." Between Mouse and Lash, I was beginning to get annoyed with people being so polite and reasonable; if I was going to be grumpy, the leas they could do is seem a little bit cowed by my bad attitude. "Now then, I believe we need to discuss how you will avoid being killed by Gendo Ikari."

"I don't think Gendo Ikari is planning to bump me off within the next few hours, so we can talk about it tomorrow." Yes, I was probably being a bit of a whiner. but I was tired, sore from being slapped around by the Third Angel, exhausted from all the magic I'd slung around, and just not in the mood to talk about the Bastard.

"Nonetheless, it only a matter of time before he makes a move against you."

"Yeah, but I'm not worried." I took a seat on the other end of the couch from Lash; since it looked like Lash was determined to discuss this now, I might as well get comfortable. "Gendo's a stone-cold pragmatist, and that makes him predictable. He won't try to kill me until I'm more dangerous than I am useful.

"On top of that, I'm building up my own circle of allies within Nerv. I've backed Ritsuko's plays often enough, and helping get Misato in means I move up in both their good books. The two of them make a nice set of allies. Fuyutsuki's harder to get a read on, but I don't think he'd back Gendo's play if he thinks I've got a decent chance of coming out on top. Gendo's dangerous, but if I can get all the other senior staff on my side he can't move openly against me, and his options for sneaky backstabbing will be limited."

"Ritsuko makes a poor ally to pin your hopes on." Lash frowned over at me, and crossed her arms across her chest. "The woman who shares Gendo's bed can hardly be depended upon to favor you over him if forced to make a choice. If Ritsuko remains loyal to Gendo, then it is quite possible Misato will choose her old friend over you, and Fuyutsuki will not support you if you are isolated. Your position is much more tenuous than you realize, my host."

"Ritsuko's relationship with Gendo is probably purely physical; the Bastard isn't the kind of guy who could actually love her, or just about anyone else for that matter. Ritsuko can be just as ruthless as Gendo; the fact that they're fuck-buddies won't be a huge factor in her decision. If anything, it's likely to make her hate the man, since she'll know first-hand what a stone-cold bastard he is."

I have to admit I wasn't exactly comfortable sounding quite so offhand about using people, but if I wanted to come ahead against Gendo I had to play his game. I might hate politics and backroom backstabbing, but over the years I'd been forced to learn how the game was played in order to survive; there were way too many people out there who wanted me dead, including a lot of the White Council.

"Let us hope, for both our sakes, that your evaluation of the woman is accurate." The Fallen casually leaned back on the couch, and added. "However, there is another advantage you possess which you have not yet taken into account." Lash paused for long enough to make me curious, before finally continuing with a smirk. "You have a talent for making impressively irrational and utterly foolish decisions, such as crippling yourself through your continual refusal to take up the coin."

"Gee, you say the nicest things sometimes, Lash." As was her nature, Lash haughtily ignored my sarcasm. "So, how does me being crazy and stupid, at least by your messed-up evil-psycho standards, translate to being an advantage?

"It is quite simple Harry. Intelligent and ruthless people like Gendo Ikari usually work on the assumption that their enemies are as intelligent and ruthless as they are. For example, it would never occur to Gendo that you would not take advantage of your relationship with the Children in any conflict with him, simply because you have compunctions against involving any child in your own conflict. Even if he understands your reservations on an intellectual level, he could never understand the degree to which your belief restricts you. A pragmatist like Gendo sees morals as something to be cast aside when the stakes are high enough. He will have difficulty truly understanding that you would willingly weaken your own position and ignore possible advantages simply because of your moral code."

I didn't bother trying to conceal my surprise at what Lash had said. Being a demon and all, Lash normally had a pretty hard time understanding that I didn't want to grow a goatee, dress in all black, cackle malevolently in the middle of conversations, and start demanding that everybody to call me Darth Dresden. "Since when did you consider being one of the good guys as any kind of advantage?"

Lash sniffed haughtily. "Considering the length and depth of our association, it should not surprise you that I have developed some capacity for grasping some of the curious things do you. It would be stranger if you remained entirely an enigma to me after all this time." Lash shifted on the couch, crossing her arms over her chest. "Why you act in this way remains a mystery to me, but I can at least recognize certain patterns in your behavior."

"The why is simple Lash; because it's right."

Lash let out a resigned sigh. "I will never understand you, my very foolish host." The two of us fell into an oddly comfortable silence, which Lash finally broke. "We need discuss nothing more, so I shall leave you to your rest. Goodnight, Harry."

"Goodnight Lash." I answered automatically before it occurred to me that telling the Fallen that lived in my brain goodnight was kind of pointless and weird. Oh well, as tired as I was, I wasn't about to lose any sleep over it.

* * *

I technically overslept a bit and was late getting into Nerv, but nobody seemed to get upset over it. Nerv-HQ seemed to be in the midst of a post-battle funk; we'd all known a battle with the Angels was coming, but there was a big difference between knowing something and actually experiencing it firsthand. Everyone dealt with the knowledge that the war against the Angels had begun in their own way; some, especially the ones doing post-battle analysis plugged themselves into their work, while others were chatting around the water cooler or indulging in whatever hobbies they could get away with on Nerv time.

Unfortunately for this wizard, I wound up crossing Ritsuko's path. The woman had dark circles under her eyes, and was holding onto a cup of coffee as if it were more precious than life itself. I've pulled enough all-nighters myself to recognize the signs. "Dresden! There you are. Come, I need your input." Before even giving me a chance to respond, Ritsuko turned about and was headed back down the corridor, and I had to step quickly to catch up. Just my luck; the biggest workaholic at Nerv was dragging me into whatever her current project was.

Ritsuko stormed into her office, and began bombarding an equally worn out and harried-looking Maya for updates on half a dozen different tests they'd run on the Third Angel's remains. The results were exactly the same every single time; a whole lot of nothing. Ritsuko sighed and chained a fresh cigarette before jamming the butt of her last one into an already full-to-overflowing ashtray.

"You see what I'm dealing with, Dresden?" Ritsuko sank into her chair and wearily rubbed her eyes. "Just … find something, anything we can use."

I considered the worn out head of the Research and Technical branch for a moment, and made a decision. "Sure thing. I do know one thing I can do right now, if you don't mind shutting off the computer, cell phones, and anything else I might fry."

Two sets of eyes settled on me, looking less than pleased by the reminder that I could kill technology, but Ritsuko nodded to Maya, then shut off her computer, her cell phone, and a few other devices. "I admit, I am a bit curious to see your magic in action Dresden, especially in a setting where it won't be ruining millions of yen worth of equipment."

I flinched a tiny bit. "Yeah, I guess did kind of ruin your experiment lab back during the whole thing with Unit 00, didn't I?"

"It's fine." Ritsuko waved the hand with the cigarette in it dismissively. "Most the equipment would've been ruined by the Evangelion anyway, and what wasn't would need a complete overhaul after an incident like that. Besides, compared to the damage the Eva did, and could have done if you hadn't acted, replacing a few computers is nothing."

"Not to mention saving the lives of a couple of techs and Rei." Maya added helpfully.

"It wasn't that big of a deal." I guess I felt a little self-conscious about the fact that two reasonably attractive women were saying positive things about me. God, I need to get laid; there hadn't been anyone since Susan. I've never been that good with women, and with so many other things to deal with sex really hadn't seemed like a priority.

I took a moment to focus on my spell, noting Ritsuko's keen scientific interest and Maya's nervous curiosity. Once the spell was ready, I waved a hand in Ritsuko's direction. "Dormius."

Apparently, Ritsuko had enough knowledge of Latin to know what I'd just done, and she got halfway through saying some very unkind things about my parentage when she let out a massive yawn. Within seconds, she was zonked out at her desk.

Maya was sharp enough to figure what I'd done once she saw the effects, and gave me a grateful smile. "Thank you, Mr. Dresden. Sempai pushes herself too hard sometimes. How long will she…"

"Can't say for sure." I admitted with a shrug. "I didn't put much into it, but as tired as she probably is, she'll sleep naturally for hours after the spell wears off."

Maya nodded, and dug out a sleeping mat that I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that a chronic workaholic like Ritsuko had tucked into a corner of her office. Between the two of us, we managed to get the woman settled into what looked like a reasonably comfortable position.

"So … um, what now Mr. Dresden?"

"Well Lt. Ibuki, you can go home and take a nap after you help get some samples from the Third Angel,so I can take it back to my lab and run a few of my own tests on them." Not to mention showing it to Bob back at my apartment; having him at my Geofront would be more convenient, but I'm pretty sure that if Gendo knew about Bob he would try very hard to steal the skull from me. An intelligent magical encyclopedia bound to loyally serve whoever controls the skull would be far too tempting for someone like Gendo to pass up.

Maya looked conflicted for a moment about my orders, and judging by the look she shot Ritsuko's way she probably wanted to try and take care of things while her superior caught up on her lost sleep, but I was pretty sure Maya had pulled an all-nighter alongside Ritsuko, so as far as I was concerned they both needed their sleep. I can understand feeling like there are far too many important things to do, so you have no time for sleep, but I've learned the hard way that pushing yourself to the point of exhaustion usually does more harm than good.

As it turned out, several hours of work only confirmed that magical examination wasn't turning up anything more useful than normal science did. Once I'd done every test I could and exhausted just about every spirit with a low enough price that I felt comfortable calling it up, I decided to call it day. After dropping my report off with one of Ritsuko's aides, I headed towards the hospital.

"Mr. Dresden, here to see the First Child again?" The matronly head nurse gave me an approving smile when she saw me entering Nerv's hospital ward and heading towards Rei's room. "She's just gotten out of surgery." Obviously I must have looked worried, because the nurse quickly added. "It was nothing major, just dealing a few of the minor injuries that weren't important enough to worry about until we had her stabilized." I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. The nurse smiled at me again. "It's good that you visit her; it's too sad when someone's all alone in the hospital, especially at her age."

Rei perked up when I entered the room. By that, I mean her posture stiffened slightly, and she turned to look at me; it might not sound like much, but for Rei becoming alert and focusing on someone the instant they entered the room was a huge reaction. "Hello, Mr. Dresden."

"Hey kid." I smiled, and for a second I could have sword I saw the corner or Rei's mouth make a slight upward twitch, but I was probably just imagining that. "Feeling alright?"

"No problems to report." The girl answered dutifully.

"Good. You need anything?"

"The hospital staff attends to my needs." The girl paused for a moment, and then produced the book I'd loaned her a few days ago and extended it to me. "I have completed the book you provided."

"Did you like it?"

Rei nodded.

"Want me to bring you the next book in the series?"

Rei nodded again.

"Alright." I cast about for another topic of conversation. "So, what do you think of the Third Child?"

Rei was silent for a while before she finally spoke up. "I do not understand him."

"Oh really?" That was a bit unexpected; Rei might have actually given me enough to start an actual conversation. I decided to take a seat next to Rei's bed; this visit might run a little longer than usual. "What about him confuses you?"

"Why did he choose to pilot Unit 01 after I was transported to the cages to pilot it?"

"He didn't want to see you get hurt."

"The Third Child does not have any reason to concern himself with my injuries."

I decided to go at the issue from a different angle. "If the situation were reversed, would you have gone in his place?"

"Yes. However, if I die I can be replaced. He cannot."

"But you still don't know him. Why would you want to protect someone who you don't know?"

Rei went quiet for long enough that I was starting to wonder if she would ever answer the question before she finally spoke. "It is a bond."

"A bond? With Shinji Ikari?"

"With everyone." Rei corrected.

"Huh." I wasn't quite sure what to make of that at first, but eventually I think I had it figured out. "So, you're a follower of the tao of Peter Parker?"

"I am not familiar with that philosophy."

I mentally whapped myself upside the head; of course Rei wouldn't understand that reference. "With great power comes great responsibility." Rei looked attentively blank, so I decided to elaborate a bit. "If you have the power to help people, you should, especially when those people aren't strong enough to help themselves."

Rei studied me in silence for a few moments before quietly asking. "Is that your personal belief?"

"Well … yeah."

"That is why you acted when Unit 00 malfunctioned. You had the strength to act, and I lacked the ability to resolve the situation on my own."

"Well, yes. I didn't want to see you get hurt, and I could do something about it, so I helped you."

"I see." Rei went silent for long enough that I was wondering if our conversation was over, when the girl suddenly spoke up once more. "I do not believe the Commander shares your philosophy."

"No. He doesn't." I tried to keep my voice as neutral as possible. So far Gendo hadn't commented on my visits to Rei, but I'm pretty sure that if caught me badmouthing him to the girl that would change.

The conversation lapsed into another silence, and before either of us got around to speaking again the hospital room's door opened and Misato came in, with a nervous Shinji in tow. "Hey there Harry, Rei."

For his part, Shinji gave a quiet greeting, and then settled for nervously shifting his feet and trying very hard to make it look like he wasn't sneaking peeks at Rei out of the corner of his eye. Poor kid probably had no clue how to talk to girls his own age; I had been halfway between fascinated and terrified of girls at his age, and I didn't have Shinji's confidence issues.

Misato was in a much more talkative mood. "So Harry, rumor has it you hit Rits with a sleep spell. Good work; she would've worked half to death if somebody hadn't done something, and Rits never listens to me when I tell her to take it easy." Misato grinned, and casually rested a hand on Shinji's shoulder. "Tell you what, I was planning a bit of a party to welcome my new roommate here; why don't you drop by too? With all the work Nerv's got us doing we haven't had a chance to catch up yet."

"Sure, sounds good."

* * *

Misato Katsuragi is a slob.

Now, I'm not a neat-freak or anything; but I do try to limit keep things from every getting past the point of controlled chaos. Disorganized labs lead to things like your girlfriend grabbing a love potion instead of an escape potion when your home gets attacked by a toad demon. That had been a hell of a first date though.

Misato's home had long since passed controlled chaos, and looked like it was headed towards being an environmental hazard. I always thought military types were supposed to be big on cleanliness; every bad war movie I'd seen had drill sergeants yelling at recruits if their beds weren't made perfectly. Either that's another thing Hollywood gets wrong, or Misato was taking advantage of the fact that she didn't have to follow all of those rules any more.

For her part, Misato seemed to be completely unbothered by how messy her apartment was. Shinji, on the other hand, looked embarrassed, and seemed to be making some effort to start cleaning things up a bit. When I tried to enter the apartment I quickly encountered resistance when Mouse paused in the doorway, sniffing and letting out a reluctant whine, put after a bit of coaxing I managed to persuade him to come in.

Misato occupied herself with tossing together some sort of meal, while Shinji hesitantly approached the dog, a hesitant smile on his face. "Is he friendly?" Mouse extended a paw towards Shinji, and after a moment the boy took the paw in hand and shook it. Before long, Mouse was on his back, getting a belly rub from the kid; I swear, the dog has a talent for conning people into petting him.

"Looks like someone's made a friend." Misato quipped as she pulled a few plastic trays out of her microwave, and put more in to replace them.

"For a dog, he has really good people skills." I knew Mouse well enough to know that he wouldn't be moving until Shinji got tired of petting him, so I went over to make small talk with Misato instead. "So, how did you end up getting him as a roommate?" I kept my voice low enough that Shinji wouldn't have an easy time overhearing us.

"Well, they were gonna stick him in an apartment by himself." Misato opened up her fridge, and offered me a beer from her substantial stockpile. I took the can, and wound up regretting it after the first sip. Either I've been spoiled by too many years of Mac's high-quality booze, or Japanese beer just tastes like piss. "You should've seen the expression on his face when they told him he was going to be alone; looked like he was about to die of a broken heart then and there, and then he starts talking about how he's used to being alone, so it's alright." A scowl slipped over Misato's face. "I understand the Commander has a job to do, but he's still a rotten father."

"Yeah." I looked over at the kid, and was a little surprised to see that he was actually smiling while Mouse affectionately slobbered on one of his hands. "It's good that you took him in. The kid needs someone who actually gives a crap about him."

Misato downed the rest of her beer, and cracked open another one before she said anything else. "I know I'm his guardian, but it'd be good if you could spend a bit of time around him too. At his age, he needs a man to look up to."

I couldn't help but let out a chuckle at that. "I don't think I'm much of a role model."

"And I am?" Misato took a long pull of her beer for emphasis. "I don't go around fighting monsters and rescuing damsels in distress."

"No, you rescue wizards who get blindsided by vampires instead."

Misato let a short chuckle. "Oh yeah, forgot about that." The microwave dinged, and Misato pulled the second set of instant food trays out and set them onto the table. "Food's ready." She informed her new ward. "Once we're all seated, I can tell you about the time I saved the wizard's ass."

"Um … are you really a wizard Mister Dresden?"

"No, they misprinted my business cards; I'm actually a lizard." Misato and Shinji both stared at me blankly.

_Puns do not work when you translate them from English to Japanese, my host._

Oh yeah; sometimes I forget that I'm actually having Lash auto-translate most of what I'm saying. "Sorry, that joke works in English." That seemed to be a satisfactory explanation, since Shinji and Misato stopped staring at me like I was a crazy weirdo. _Lash, couldn't you have taken a few liberties with the translation so it still would have been funny?_

_Apologies, my host, but my sense of humor is far too refined, and I simply lack the capacity to reproduce your particular brand of humor._ Stupid smartassed Fallen.

The three of us got started on the meal. I took a bite of food, chewed, and forced myself to swallow. I didn't know you could mess up instant food. Then again, judging by the eagerness with which Misato was attacking her own meal it might not have been a case of bad cooking so much as it was just having really weird tastes. Judging by the expression on Shinji's face, he shared my opinion of the food. When it looked like Misato wasn't looking, the boy quickly slipped the dish under the table waved it in Mouse's direction. Being the generally nice and helpful fellow that he was, Mouse promptly cleaned Shinji's plate for him; I guess her cooking isn't that bad to somebody who's used to kibble and licking his own butt.

Of course, since Shinji had already gone for the classic 'slip the food to the dog' ploy, I couldn't get away with that. Lucky for me, I had a backup plan. _Help me Obi-wan Lashobi, you're my only hope._

_As you wish, my host._

Lash's illusionary tricks managed to make Misato's cooking taste good. However, something else was bugging me. _Come on Lash, I know you had to get a Star Wars reference. Hell's bells, I know you've seen it; we watched It over at Billy and Georgia's a few years ago._

_If I acknowledge your random cinematic and cultural references it would only encourage you to make them more frequently than you already do._

"So, the two of you actually fought vampires?" I was a bit surprised that Shinji didn't sound more skeptical, but I suppose that getting tossed into a giant cyborg to go fight a giant alien had probably already done a pretty good job of destroying any idea of normalcy.

"Yeah, we ran into a nest of them back during the Reclamation Wars." Misato smirked over at me. "That's how Harry and I met; he wanted to play hero and save us from the big nasty monsters. Of course, I wound up saving him instead."

"Hey, I took down more of them than your entire company."

"And that last one would've eaten your face if I hadn't shot it off you."

"I had it under control." I groused. It had taken me a bit to figure out why Misato wanted to swap war stories in front of Shinji. The kid had just gone through his baptism of fire; there was a good chance he'd want someone to talk to, but I remembered enough about being a teenage boy to know that he wouldn't volunteer to talk about being scared out of his wits in battle. A bit of casual battle-talk might help him open up on the subject a bit.

Misato and I swapped a few more tales of our various hot spots that we'd been in, though we both tried to keep the mood relatively lighthearted and mostly restricted it to our funnier moments. I mentioned the time I got to ride around on a zombie T-Rex, Misato shared some tales of barracks pranks, I told the story of how I got Mouse by fighting off demon monkeys with flaming poop, and Misato told the tale of an old commander of hers who had a completely ridiculous mustache.

After about ten minutes of talk, Shinji seemed to be politely engaged on the edges of our conversation, and Misato played her hand. "So Shinji, what was it like piloting the Evangelion?"

Shinji froze like a deer trapped in the headlights, and after a long silence mumbled. "It was … I dunno." The boy averted his gaze from both of us, intently studying the floor. As the silence dragged on, Mouse came up to the boy and set his massive head in Shinji's lap, prompting Shinji to start idly scratching the dog's ears. Petting the dog seemed to calm him a bit, and after a about fifteen seconds of that Shinji softly said. "When I was piloting it I was …" He looked up at the two of us, and I could see what little resolve he had managed crumble. Instead of finishing his sentence he went back to petting Mouse.

Long after the silence had reached the point of being painfully awkward, Misato spoke up again, trying to force cheerfulness into her voice. "I know what you need. A nice hot bath; just wash all those worries down the drain!" Shinji nodded in what struck me as a curiously Rei-like manner, and slowly pulled himself up from the table and headed towards the bathroom. Mouse watched the boy leave, and gave a slight whimper.

I had to agree with the dog's assessment. "The kid's not doing too good, is he?"

"Most people don't after their first time in combat." Misato agreed with a sigh. "I was hoping I could get him to open up a bit by keeping things a little silly, but I guess it didn't work." Misato knocked back the rest of her beer. "Maybe I'm not suited to taking care of a kid after all."

"Relax, you'll do fine." I tried to sound reassuring, but I'm not sure if I pulled it off or not. "Nobody gets it all perfect, but as long as you care and try to get it right you can't mess up too bad."

Before Misato could respond, we were interrupted by a yelling naked Shinji flinging open the door. "M-m-m-Misato! There's a – a uh – a thing!"

Before either of us could ask him to elaborate, a penguin walked out from the room, and made it about halfway across the kitchen before Mouse intercepted the bird, sniffing it curiously. The bird squawked at Mouse, but gave no other reaction, and after Mouse sniffed him for a while that seemed to satisfy the dog's curiosity.

"So, guess you've met Pen-Pen then." Misato commented. "I probably should've warned you about him; he's a warm water penguin."

"Oh." Shinji looked a bit abashed now that he realized he'd been freaked out by a simple pet. "Sorry."

"By the way Shinji, you might want to cover up." Misato commented casually.

The boy looked down, and suddenly realized he'd just flashed the woman who was going to be his guardian. The boy let out a startled yelp, and quickly fled the room.

Once Shinji had gone back to the bathroom, the two of us exchanged a look, and neither one of us could keep a straight face. Misato let out a little giggle, then I chuckled, and pretty soon the two of us were laughing our asses off. What can I say? Naked people are funny.

* * *

_Ghost Story_ is awesome. That is all.


	10. Shinji I

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

I'm still not even sure why I came to Tokyo-3.

Well, that's not actually true. I came because my father told me to. I guess I had some crazy idea that he might have changed his mind and decided he wanted to be my father after all. Ever since he cast me aside the only thing I've had to actually connect me to my father was an old SDAT player he left at my sensei's house, and now maybe I could have a chance to really get to know him. It was stupid, but I guess that even though I knew what he was like and how unlikely it was that he would suddenly become the sort of father I wanted him to be, I still hoped for it.

What I actually got was him telling me that he still didn't care about me, and he'd only summoned me because he had a use for me. Not only that, I was his backup plan; if the other pilot hadn't gotten hurt or anyone else could have taken her place, he never would have called me.

I'm sure a lot of people think that the reason I eventually decided to pilot the Evangelion was because I saw how badly Ayanami was injured. It's like the sort of thing a hero would do; valiantly going into battle to protect a wounded maiden. It makes for a nice story; I just wish I could bring myself to really believe it was true. I mean, I didn't like the idea of really hurt girl going off to fight, but at the same time I have to wonder how much of my decision to get in the Evangelion was because of her, and how much of it was because if she could pilot the Eva I wouldn't be of any use to my father.

I've always been unnecessary, just a burden on others. That's why father sent me away. To actually have people need me … felt nice. I guess that's why I'm still here; even if my father still doesn't care about me, at least I can feel like I'm doing something useful here, like there are people who care about me. Even if the only reason they care is because I can pilot the Eva, it better than not caring at all.

I'd been hoping that I would actually get to live with father once I moved to Tokyo-3, but I suppose I should have realized that wouldn't happen. Instead Miss Katsuragi took me in. She seems nice, although she can be a little frivolous, but I'm still not quite sure what to think of her. Plus when she was at the apartment she dressed in a strappy tank top and really short shorts that –

No. Bad thoughts. Stupid teenage hormones.

Mister Dresden's the same way. At least he's not rude and gun-crazy the way you always hear most Americans are supposed to be. Of course, Miss Katsuragi and Mister Dresden are probably only being nice to me because they have to, or because they think it will encourage me to keep piloting the Eva. Mister Dresden's dog is really nice though, and I'm pretty sure Mouse doesn't care if I'm a pilot or not. He just likes me because I'm me.

"Shinji." Dr. Akagi sounded like she was annoyed with me, but was trying to be patient and tolerant. "Try to concentrate on the training."

"Right. Sorry."

"Remember, Angels can only be killed by destroying the core. Just center in on the target, and pull the trigger."

"Yes. Dr. Akagi. Sorry." Stupid me; I'd been thinking about unnecessary things when I was supposed to be learning how to control the Eva. I still wasn't used to breathing the LCL, but at least now they had a plugsuit for me so my clothes wouldn't get ruined every time I piloted or trained. Plus, now they had a suit made for a guy instead of trying to make me wear one of Ayanami's spares; wearing a girl's plugsuit would be way too embarrassing. There were breasts on it. And I had to be completely naked when I put it on; they wouldn't even let me wear any underwear. Didn't that mean that when Ayanami put her plugsuit on she was also –

No. Bad thoughts. Stupid teenage hormones.

After I'd gone through the simulation a few times, Dr. Akagi's assistant contacted me. "Very good Shinji. Sempai said you should keep practicing for a while, to help you get used to operating the Evangelion."

I like Lt. Ibuki. Dr. Akagi wasn't mean or anything, but she could be a little cold at times, and she generally didn't bother pretending that I was anything more than just the pilot. In a way I didn't mind; at least she was honest about the fact that I was just a pilot instead of trying to pretend she actually cared about me. However, Lt. Ibuki was friendly and warm, and even though she was probably that way with everyone, it was still nice to have someone who at least tried to act like they saw me as anything more than the person who piloted the Evangelion.

It was a bit odd that she worked so well with Dr. Akagi when they had very different personalities, but it seemed like they made a good team and their different personalities balanced each other out. After all, if Dr. Akagi and Miss Katsuragi can be friends, then there's no reason that Lt. Ibuki and Dr. Akagi couldn't be friends too. Although, from what Miss Katsuragi said the other night after she'd had a few too many beers Lt. Ibuki wasn't interested in being friends with Dr. Akagi, but –

No. Bad thoughts. Stupid teenage hormones.

The problem with being in the entry plug is that there's not much to think about, and I didn't have my SDAT or anything to keep my mind occupied. It was hard not to think about perverted things or worry about what people thought of me when there was nothing else to keep me busy; the training was simple and repetitive; so I still had time to think. Maybe if I tried hard enough I could just focus on the training and shut everything else out.

"Center in on the target and pull the trigger."

"Center in on the target and pull the trigger."

"Center in on the target and pull the trigger."

*Break*

I was running late for school today; I'd overslept by a bit, and then I had to convince Miss Katsuragi that I could make my own breakfast and lunch. She means well, and I don't want to make her angry by telling her she's a bad cook or anything, but…

I got about a block down the street before I ran into Mr. Dresden taking Mouse for a walk. "Hey, Shinji."

"Oh, Mister Dresden. Hello." I was in a hurry, but it would be rude to just rush past him without even saying hello. Mouse noticed me, and came over to let me pet him, then leaned against me hard enough to nearly knock me over. He's a nice dog, but sometimes I think he forgets that he's also a very big dog. I just hope I don't ever do something wrong and make him angry.

"Just Harry is fine. You on your way to school?'

"Yes." I finished scratching Mouse's ears, and he turned his head a bit to lick my hand. I smiled at the dog, and decided to pet him a bit more. "It's not fair, having to pilot the Eva and go to school as well."

"A lot of things about your situations aren't fair." Mister Dresden agreed. "But you still need a basic education, and if you don't go to school you wouldn't have any chances to interact with kids your own age. Well, aside from Rei."

"Yeah, I guess." I reached over to run my other hand through the fur around Mouse's neck, and the dog let out a whuff of breath that hopefully meant I was petting him the right way.

Mister Dresden let out a chuckle. "Mouse seems to have taken a liking to you. I guess I better be careful, or you might end up stealing him away from me."

I stopped petting the dog, and quickly stood up. "I … I wasn't trying to … sorry."

Mouse looked over at Mr. Dresden, let out a very soft whine, and placed a paw on top of his muzzle and over his eyes for a few seconds.

Mister Dresden held up one of hands to forestall whatever I might say next. "Relax Shinji, I was joking. You can pet him as much as you want." Mr. Dresden sounded apologetic, even though it wasn't his fault that I had misunderstood him.

"Oh." I went back to petting the dog "Alright … sorry."

I was still petting Mouse when Miss Katsuragi's car drove up. The Lt. Colonel rolled down her window, and shouted out. "Hey Shinji, I thought you were running late for school?"

I froze. I'd forgotten completely about that.

"Hop in." Miss Katsuragi offered. "It's not too far out of my way, and I'll get you there faster than walking."

"Alright." I gave Mouse one last pat, and then started walking over to Miss Katsuragi's car. Right before I stepped in, I looked back to Mister Dresden. "Um, thanks for letting me pet your dog, Harry."

"No problem." Mister Dresden waved a casual goodbye. "Sorry I got you late for school, hope you don't get in too much trouble."

I got into the passenger seat of Miss Katsuragi's car, and once I was buckled up she set off towards the school. "Um. Sorry for the trouble, Misato." I still wasn't entirely comfortable being on a first name basis with her, but she had insisted pretty soon after we met, and I didn't want to offend her by saying no.

"It's no trouble Shinji. Just try not to make a habit of being late for school."

"Sorry."

"You don't have to apologize so much, Shinji."

"Sor –" Miss Katsuragi gave me a playful whap on the shoulder, and I quickly corrected myself. "Um … alright."

"Better." Miss Katsuragi grinned at me. "So, want me to tell your teacher you're late because of Nerv business, so you won't get in trouble?"

"No, that's fine. It's my own fault I'm later."

"Well yeah, but she doesn't need to know that."

"I wouldn't want to get you in trouble…"

"Don't worry about it." Miss Katsuragi waved my concerns away. "The only person who might notice and care is Ritsuko, and that's just because it would give her a reason to lecture me again. I need to give her a good excuse to yell at me every once in a while, it keeps her young."

"Um … well … okay then."

"That's the spirit!" Miss Katsuragi pulled out her cell phone and made a call to school's office to tell them I would be a bit late because of my duties at Nerv. By the time the phone call was done, we were pulling up in front of school. "Don't worry Shinji, it'll be our little secret." Miss Katsuragi winked and grinned at me, and I tried to smile back in response. "Have a good day at school!"

"Yeah, um … you have a good day at work." I stepped out of the car, and Miss Katsuragi waved goodbye before heading off towards Nerv. I guess Miss Katsuragi's not the most responsible guardian ever, but she does try to be nice to me in her own way. My old sensei never would have lied to keep me from getting in trouble at school.

School at Tokyo-3 was pretty much like school everywhere else; having a standardized curriculum will do that. The students and teachers had changed, but it's not like I really knew any of them all that well. The only other students who I knew at all were Ayanami and Class Representative Horaki, and I only knew Ayanami because of Nerv and Horaki because one of her duties as the class rep was to help transfer students get acclimated on the first day of school. A lot of students and teachers had left Tokyo-3 after the Angel attacked, so the classes were all pretty small, but I didn't mind. Fewer people to deal with.

I wound up being about fifteen minutes late for English class. Apparently the original teacher had left when everyone started evacuating, and the new teacher was another American like Mr. Dresden, which I guess made sense. They needed another teacher on short notice, after all. "Sorry I'm late, Raith-sensei." After a moment I remembered which class I was in, and then haltingly repeated myself in English.

"It's fine Shinji, Miss Katsuragi called and explained the situation. Take a seat." The English teacher smiled, and I had to quickly stop any perverted thoughts from springing up again. At least this time, it wasn't completely my fault; from what I'd overheard, a lot of guys liked the new English teacher, and it was generally agreed that she had a very pretty smile. Now that'd I'd seen it firsthand, I had to agree. So, at least this time I wasn't any more of a pervert than just about every other guy in the class.

I took my seat, and class resumed as if I hadn't interrupted it. I managed to keep up with the lesson reasonably well, and didn't make a complete idiot out of myself when the sensei called on me to answer a question. It occurred to me that perhaps I could ask Mister Dresden if I could practice my English with him sometime? I mean, he's an American after all. Or maybe Ayanami? I'd seen her reading a book in English once during lunch.

Math came after English, and went about as well as my Math class ever does, but then we got to History. I used to enjoy history back at my old school, but the teacher here wasn't very good. Unfortunately Tokyo-3 was short on teachers after so many had resigned and moved after the battle, and apparently it was especially short on history teachers. So, instead of getting a good teacher, we got a half-senile old man who rambled on and on about the Second Impact, and how he had been in Nebukawa when the Second Impact happened, and how kids these days didn't appreciate how hard things had been after the Second Impact and all the sacrifices the older generation made during the post-Impact years.

According to our textbooks we should have been discussing the Sengoku Period. Every once in a while someone would ask a question that dragged the teacher back on-topic, but within a few minutes the conversation somehow got turned back to the Second Impact again. For once, Ayanami wasn't the only person in the class who seemed to regard everything with a sense of bored disinterest; only class rep Horaki bothered to make an effort to look like a good, attentive student.

"Toyotomi Hideyoshi's attempts to conquer Korea failed, and the failure weakened the Toyotomi clan. creating an opening that Tokugawa Ieyasu was quick to exploit . "The old man paused to clean his glasses, and his voice took an a distant tone. "I remember … It was shortly after the Second Impact when the Koreans destroyed Old Tokyo. Even though the water levels were already rising and the city would be underwater soon, the North Korean government chose to launch their experimental N2 weapon against our capital. The government had already begun evacuations several days ago to escape the rising waters, but the loss of life was still terrible. Of course, I was in Nebukawa at the time, so I didn't witness any of it myself, but I knew people who were there. In the aftermath of the attack, the JSDF and South Korean armed forces advanced to…"

I was on the verge of falling asleep when I got a message on my laptop. That surprised me; I knew people sometimes used their computers to chat with each other, especially in a boring class like this, but nobody had ever tried to start a conversation with me before. The message was short and to the point:

"Is it true that you are the pilot of the robot? Y/N"

I looked around, curious to see who might have sent the message. When I finally looked behind me, I spotted a pair of girls, one of whom smiled and waved at me while the other was typing away at her laptop. Seconds later, the words, "It's true, isn't it? Y/N" appeared on my screen.

I knew I probably shouldn't talk about the fact that I was the pilot; after all, as far as I knew nobody outside of Nerv knew that I was a pilot now, and from what I'd overheard nobody knew Ayanami was a pilot either. On the other hand, while I'd been extensively briefed on what I wasn't allowed to tell anyone outside of Nerv, nobody had ever actually told me I wasn't allowed to tell my classmates that I was a pilot. Obviously the school administrators must have known I was involved with Nerv, and word must have leaked out if people were asking me now. So it's not like confirming it would be that bad. Hadn't Miss Katsuragi said that what I did while piloting the Eva was a good thing, that I'd helped to protect Tokyo-3, and I should be proud of what I'd done?

Plus … well, normally girls don't ever talk to me. I'm used to it; I'm not the kind of guy girls like. I'm not that good looking, I'm a complete wimp, and while I'm not an idiot or anything, I'm not smart enough to really impress anybody with my intelligence. Not to mention the fact that girls scare me; if I actually tried talking to one I'd probably I'd probably just say something stupid, and then she'd laugh at me, then tell her friends how stupid I was so they could laugh at me too. Or I'd accidently say or do something perverted, and no girl would even look at me if I had a reputation for being a pervert.

But now I had two girls who seemed to actually be interested in me, just because I might be a pilot. Maybe if they knew I was a pilot girls might actually start to notice me instead of just ignoring me all the time. Even the guys would probably think it was pretty neat that I was a pilot. I could have friends. I could be popular. I could just imagine the scene:

_Hey, I think Shinji is a pretty cool guy._

_Yeah, he pilots a giant robot and doesn't afraid of anything._

_I wish Shinji was my boyfriend!_

I've been alone for a long time. I thought I was used to living that way, and yet now that I had a chance to not be alone, I couldn't bring myself to just let it pass by. So, before I could second guess my decision, I typed into the laptop that yes, I was the pilot.

It took less than five seconds for me to regret that particular choice.

In theory, everyone liking me and paying attention to me sounded great. In reality, having almost every person in the class suddenly swarm around me was terrifying. All these people I barely knew were crowding around me and getting way too close for comfort. Every one of them had half a dozen questions to ask, and they were all trying to shout over each other to get my attention. This was not what I had been hoping for.

There were only three people in the entire room (four if you counted the teacher, who hadn't even noticed that nobody was listening to him anymore) who weren't part of the mob around me. Ayanami obviously already knew I was a pilot, and was still staring out the window as if nothing unusual was going on in the classroom. Horaki, on the other hand, was busy yelling at everyone for disrupting class and trying to make us at least pretend we were actually proper students. The last one was this one guy in a tracksuit I don't remember seeing in class before. I would be getting acquainted with him soon.

* * *

Getting punched hurts.

"Sorry about that, new kid." Tracksuit Guy said, cracking his knuckles menacingly. "Thing is, you deserved it." He seemed to be satisfied with clobbering me once, since after that he walked off

One other guy had followed us out behind the school; he looked like a bit of a nerd, and if I remember right his name was Aida Kensuke. As Tracksuit Guy walked off, Aida stepped forward and offered me a hand up. "Sorry about Toji. He's a nice guy normally; it's just that his sister got hurt during the fight with the monster the other day. So … well … there you have it."

I guess I couldn't blame for being mad about that, but blaming me was hardly fair. "It's not my fault. It's not like I wanted to be a pilot."

Apparently that was the wrong thing to say, because Tracksuit Guy – Toji, turned around, shoved Aida out of the way, and yanked me up by the shirt. I was pretty sure I was about to get punched again. I guess I couldn't really blame him; I mean, even if I hadn't wanted to pilot the Eva, I'd still agreed to do it, and then made a mess of the subsequent battle. If I hadn't screwed up, his sister would still be fine. So, I guess I deserved to get hit.

Even if I didn't, the guy was bigger and stronger than me, and looked like he'd been in plenty of fights before, so it's not like I could actually do anything to stop him hitting me anyway.

Toji was winding up for his second punch when a single softly spoken word interrupted him. "Desist."

Toji pulled the punch short a few inches away from my face, and all three of us turned to look Rei Ayanami. For a minute, I think we were all just frozen in place with shock. Once Toji finally recovered from his surprise, and spent a few seconds looking back and forth between me and Ayanami. She was a pilot too … was he thinking of beating her up as well? I got my feet under me, and I could feel my hands curling up into fists

Of course, if I tried fighting this guy he would probably just beat me up some more. I mean, I've gotten some combat training since I became a pilot, but they've only been training me for two weeks, and that training was for fighting in the Eva, which probably wouldn't do me much good in a normal fight. A couple of the senseis I had lived with had also tried to teach me some martial arts, but the last one to try had been years ago, and I'd never been very good, so that wouldn't help either. Plus, Toji was a lot bigger and stronger than I was. However, while I might be a weakling and a coward, Ayanami had just gotten out of the hospital still had a patch over one eye and an arm in a cast. I might not be much of a man, but if he tried to hurt her I would have to do something. Maybe if tried going after this Toji guy I could keep him focused on just beating me up so he'd leave Ayanami alone?

Before things got violent, Aida stepped forward, and put a hand on Toji's shoulder. "Hey, Toji, it's not worth it. Just let it go."

Toji took a deep breath, and then released his hold on my shirt and stepped back. He couldn't just walk away without one final parting shot, though. "Some hotshot pilot you are, hiding behind a girl's skirt." As long as he was going to walk away, I was fine with letting him get the last word in.

So that just left me and Ayanami. I wouldn't have been surprised if a teacher had stepped in, or one of the students who had been so impressed by the fact that I was a pilot, and the Class Rep certainly would've intervened in a fight on general principle, but Ayanami? I mean, I know we're both pilots, but I don't think I've ever actually even spoken a single word to her. Not that I haven't wanted to, it's just … well, I don't know how to approach her. Like I said before, I don't know how to talk to girls, and girls don't want to talk to me, and Ayanami is pretty unapproachable even for a girl.

Before I could figure what to say, Ayanami spoke up again. "There is another Angel approaching. We should go." Her tone was about the same as how I would have responded if someone asked me about the weather. With that said, the girl trotted off towards Nerv.

It took me a bit to catch up with her, and a while longer to muster up enough courage to speak. "Um. Ayanami?" Ayanami said nothing but she turned her head to regard me with her one good eye. It took me a bit to speak up again. "I was wondering … why did you stop that guy from hitting me?"

"It is the tao of Peter Parker." The girl answered, her voice still completely flat.

That might have been a helpful answer if I had any idea who Peter Parker was. Judging by the name, he must have been some kind of American or English Philosopher. Of course, saying that I had no idea what she was talking about would probably just insult her, so I said nothing. However, either my body language gave it away, or she just guessed that I wouldn't be familiar with the man she referred to.

"You lacked the strength to resolve the situation on your own, so I assisted you." Ayanami elaborated. "It is my responsibility to do so."

The fact that her voice was still completely flat just made the words sting more. She didn't say it like she was trying to be mean about it, it was just a statement of fact. I was a weakling who couldn't take care of himself, so she had to protect me. Worse than that, someone had actually ordered her to protect me. I could just see my father saying that: 'Pilot Ayanami, despite the fact that you just got out the hospital and are still half-crippled and a girl, my son is such a useless weakling that I he will need you to protect him.'

"Well, thanks for helping me." I might be a worthless weakling who needed to be protected by a girl, but I wasn't going to be an ungrateful worthless weakling.

Ayanami blinked, and said nothing more as the two of us rushed to the GeoFront.

* * *

Father wasn't there when the two of us arrived. Ayanami went off to do whatever it is she was going to be doing while I was in battle, while I got changed into my plugsuit and ran to the cages. I had been hoping that Father would at least be there to witness my battle; I guess I was thinking if I did well enough, he would finally acknowledge me, but that wouldn't happen if he wasn't here to see me.

Who was I kidding? It's not like my father would suddenly start caring about me even if he was here.

Why was I piloting this thing? I knew I wasn't cut out for it, and everyone else probably knew it too, even if nobody except Ayanami would actually tell me that to my face. Then there were the people like that Toji guy, who hated me just because I was a pilot…

"Shinji, it's time to mobilize. Are you ready?"

"Yes, Misato."

"Alright. Remember, neutralize the target's AT Field, then fire a burst into the Angel's core. It'll just like we practiced. Understood?"

"Yeah. Center in on the target and pull the trigger." Just like all the practices, except that this time if I messed up I'd end up dead instead of just having to deal with Dr. Akagi being disappointed in me and Lt. Ibuki trying to encourage me to do better next time.

"Center in on the target and pull the trigger." I could do this.

The Evangelion launched, and then I was face-to-face with the Fourth Angel. I guess I'd expected it to look like the last Angel I'd fought, but it didn't. Instead of being humanoid it looked kinda snake-like, and it had a pair of glowing tentacle-type things along its sides.

"Center in on the target and pull the trigger." I did exactly that, just like all the times we'd practiced. Well, not exactly like all the times we'd practiced; Miss Katsuragi always told me I should only fire in short bursts, but I couldn't make myself let go of the trigger. In the simulations, the Angel always went down after I fired a few shots into it, nice and clean. This time, a big cloud of smoke from detonating shells and debris obscured the Angel, and I couldn't tell if it had gone down or not. I could hear Misato yelling at me stop shooting, but she didn't understand; I couldn't see the Angel, and for all I knew it could still be alive, so I held down the trigger until the magazine started clicking on empty.

I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm down a bit. I couldn't see the Angel any more. I guess that meant I'd gotten it, right? That hadn't been so hard after all. I could do this.

Then an energy tentacle lashed out at me from behind the cloud of smoke. I tried to dodge and wound up just stumbling backwards and falling down, but that meant the tentacle went over my head instead of hitting me, so I guess it was good enough. Instead, the Angel's attack just cut the barrel off of my rifle, and carved the building I'd been standing next to in half.

Let me repeat that; it cut a building in half with a single attack. If I'd been a fraction of a second slower in dodging, it would have been me that got cut in half instead.

"We're sending out the spare rifle Shinji. Take it!" A map popped up on a part of the viewscreen, showing me where the rifle was and what the best route would be to get to it. There was just one problem; the rifle was almost a mile away from where I was; the Angel was a lot closer than that. It would kill me before I could get to the rifle. I was going to die.

**I was going to die!**

The Angel's tentacles lashed out, and I did everything I could to avoid taking another hit, to stay alive just a little bit longer. I wasn't really thinking or coming up with any kind of strategy; I was running on pure survival instinct, trying as hard as I could to just stay alive for the next few seconds. What else could I do?

Eventually, I tried going to the left when I should have gone to the right, and wound up getting smacked into one of the larger reinforced buildings that was actually solid enough to survive the collision with my Eva. While I was still stunned from the first hit, the Angel followed up on, sending my Eva smashing through the carved up remnants of the building. Alarms started blaring in the entry plug, and a clock popped up in my field of vision and started counting down from five minutes.

"Umbilical cable severed, Eva is operating on internal power." The rest of the bridge crew continued shouting various status updates, but I wasn't really listening any more. Now I was in really big trouble; not only was completely out of my league, but if I didn't find some way to win or at least get away in less than five minutes, I would run out of power and be a sitting duck.

While all this was going through my head, the Angel wrapped a tentacle around one of Unit 01's ankles, and casually flung me into the air. I had a blurred impression of the city and the sky spinning around me, until my flight came to abrupt stop when my back slammed into a hill on the outskirts of the city.

For a second I couldn't think about much beyond the fact that I'd just been tossed several miles through the air, and that really, really hurt. The good news was that I could hear the command crew saying that nothing had been seriously damaged; the bad news was that I was now even further away from any possibility of getting the spare rifle, or a fresh umbilical cable.

I realized I could feel something pushing against the palm of my hand, and since the Angel was still pretty far away I had no idea what it could be. I lifted my hand a bit and the pressure eased, and underneath it I saw a dome of solid rock. Once the Eva's hand was clear, the dome receded back into the ground, and revealed three people behind it. Two of them I recognized right away; that Toji guy who had punched me, and his friend Aida. The third was some older-looking European guy I'd never seen before, dressed in a grey cloak and carrying a European-style sword of all things.

"Hell's bells! What's Morgan doing here?" I guess that explains how this Morgan guy could call up walls of solid rock; he must be a wizard like Mister Dresden.

Before I had a chance to ask Mr. Dresden about this Morgan, the man in question yelled something at my two fellow students in English. Even if I hadn't understood what the word 'run' meant, I probably would have been able to figure it out just from the fact that it was the only sane course of action at the moment. Toji and Aida started running away from the area as fast as they could.

The two of them were still way too close when the Angel got here. I couldn't just get up and fight; if I did, I would probably end up stepping on someone in the chaos of the battle; I already would have squashed Toji and Aida if Morgan hadn't intervened, after all. Morgan growled something in a language I didn't recognize and thrust a fist towards the Angel. A huge chunk of solid rock ripped out from the ground and hurtled at the Angel, only to bounce ineffectively off of it's AT field.

In response to Morgan's attack, the Angel lashed out with its energy tentacles, sending one at my downed Eva, and the other in Morgan's direction. I couldn't dodge without the risk of crushing someone, and even if I dodged the attack aimed at me Morgan would still be in danger, so instead I grabbed both of the tentacles.

Grabbing the tentacles denied the Angel its only means of attack, but judging by the uncomfortable warmth spreading through my hands I was probably damaging them, and a stalemate was not a good situation for someone who only has three and a half minutes of power left. Morgan tried tossing some more magic at it, but nothing got through the Angel's AT field. That's when I came up with a desperate plan.

I cued the Evangelion's external speakers. "Um, Morgan, right? Aim for the big red thing in the center of its chest and hit it with your best attack when I tell you to." I tried to block out the pain in my hands, and concentrated on bringing my own AT field up, and using it to neutralize the Angel's defenses. "Now!"

I giant fist of stone burst out the ground between my Eva's legs and struck the Angel's core with an uppercut. As far as I could tell the attack hadn't actually damage the Angel's core, but it Angel did stagger a bit as if the blow had caught it off guard and actually hurt a little bit. I took advantage of the opening to plant a foot on the Angel's long torso and shove it away, while simultaneously throwing the tentacles back. The Angel floated back away from me, eventually coming to a rest about a mile away back in Tokyo-3 proper.

A warning alarm went off, and I saw that I only had a little more than a minute of battery power left. How had that happened? I'd had more than three minutes left just a little bit ago. Then I remembered that Mr. Dresden had mentioned that magic could mess with high-tech stuff; I guess those spells Morgan was using must have had some kind of effect on the batteries.

"Good work Shinji!" Miss Katsuragi's voice wasn't quite as clear as it had been at the start of the battle, probably another side effect of being anywhere near a wizard tossing spells around. "Now get out of there! Use extraction route 34! Fall back to the eastern side of the mountain!"

Miss Katsuragi wanted me to run? I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Nobody thought I could actually handle this. Normally I would have agreed with them, but now, in the middle of this battle, I was thinking differently.

"I mustn't run away."

I would show them all I could be a real Evangelion pilot.

"I mustn't run away."

I would prove that I wasn't just a useless weakling.

"I mustn't run away."

I would show my father that I deserved his respect.

"I mustn't run away!"

I pulled out the progressive knife.

"Shinji! I gave you an order, now retreat!" Miss Katsuragi didn't sound happy. Once I won the battle and proved myself, she would understand.

I'm not sure if my shout was a battlecry or a scream of terror; maybe it was both. My Eva charged down the mountain at the Fourth Angel. When I was most of the way there the Angel lashed out with both of its energy tentacles, and with my speed tied in charging straight at it I couldn't hope to dodge in time. So I took the hits, screamed out my agony, and kept charging.

Through the pain, I saw that I'd finally gotten close enough to the Angel, and I thrust the progressive knife into its core. When the Angel didn't go down, I pulled the knife out, and stabbed again, and again, and again. I'm not sure how many times I stabbed it, but eventually went completely still. Seconds later, my Eva's power supply ran out.

And then there was just me, alone in my darkened entry plug. I suppose that was a good thing; nobody was there to see me break down crying as all the pain and terror of the fight finally caught up to me.


	11. Harry X

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

It didn't take me long to find Donald Morgan after the battle with the Fourth Angel. The man did kind of stand out from the small army of Nerv technicians working on retrieving the depowered Unit 01 and the remains of the Fourth Angel, after all. Half a dozen of Nerv's Security and Intelligence goons were standing around in his general vicinity, though none of them had actually worked up the guts to confront Morgan yet. Can't say I blame them; Morgan might not be capable of smacking down an Angel, but disabling half a dozen ordinary mortals would be child's play for him. I gave a nod to the security guys and they moved off enough to let me talk to Morgan in private, though they still stayed close enough to move in if anything happened. Much to my annoyance the grizzled old warden didn't seem the slightest bit surprised to see me.

"Morgan, it's such an incredibly unpleasant surprise to see you again." After more than a month of almost exclusively speaking Japanese, even if it was all auto-translated by Lash instead of actually speaking the language myself, using English again felt a bit odd. "Shouldn't you be killing warlock kittens or something? Or is this about your man-crush on me again? I mean, I'm really flattered you would follow me all the way to Japan, but –"

"Dresden." At least now Morgan looked and sounded as annoyed as I felt. I've found a lot of ways to get on his nerves over the years, it's pretty much a hobby of mine by this point, and implying that he was gay for me always seemed to be a big winner. I guess it's lucky for me he's not a smartass, or he'd throw it right back in my face and ask why I kept wanting him to be interested in me that way. Or if he'd found out about that time I pretended to be gay in order to sneak into Thomas's apartment. Or the fact that it's been a very long time since I had sex with a woman. Or…

You know what; let's just drop this entire line of thought. Have I mentioned that I love boobs?

"So, why are you here, Morgan?"

"You move to Japan. A few weeks later, a giant monster shows up right around the area you moved to. I don't believe in coincidences."

How delightfully paranoid of him. Then again, I guess he was kind of right. "So, let me guess, I created or summoned some sort of massive terrifying eldritch abomination in an effort to destroy the entire White Council and you in particular, but now you've finally figured out my evil plan, and have come here to stop me?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Dresden." The warden sneered at me. "Creating or summoning a being like that is far beyond your power. Besides, the Japanese and UN forces wouldn't have been nearly so well-prepared to counterattack with conventional military and a giant robot if you'd randomly summoned up some sort of elder demon or Outsider."

"You never know, this is Japan after all. I mean, building giant robots is practically their national pastime, and Godzilla shows up just about every week, so it's no surprise they're prepared."

Morgan let out the annoyed grunt he usually offered whenever I started being a smartass. "In any case, just because you're not a mad dark wizard doesn't mean you're not exactly the sort of reckless fool who could find himself neck-deep in this. So … what's your angle in this, Dresden?"

"Sorry, can't tell you, it's classified information. Need-to-know basis and all, that, and you don't need to know, Morgan. It's actually against the law for you to know too much about this, so a legal zealot like you would probably have to chop off his own head if I actually told you anything."

"There will be an accounting for this, Dresden. Don't think you can hide behind mortal authorities and their laws. Your obligations to the White Council supersede any other concerns."

"Well, if the Council really wants to involve themselves, you can tell them that this whole situation is none of their damned business." Morgan lips drew back from his teeth, and the warden let out a low growl of rage. Before Morgan could launch his diatribe about how the Council's jurisdiction is whatever the Council says it is, I cut him off. "These creatures are not of supernatural origin, and the mortals are more than capable of engaging them with their own resources. Also, as you might have noticed while the monster was kicking your ass and laughing off your best shots, the Council can't really do much against these things anyway. Only the Evangelions are capable of engaging and destroying these monsters."

Technically speaking, I was probably stretching the truth a bit. I guess you could argue that the AT fields were a natural biological function of the Angels, but there were definitely some kind of mystical properties to the whole thing. Of course, the Council didn't need to know that, especially since that would encourage them to get involved. While trying to set the Merlin and Gendo against each other certainly had its appeals, getting the White Council involved would just add too many new elements to an already unstable situation.

Morgan didn't look the slightest bit impressed by my argument. "That creature was able to repel some of my best attack spells. How, exactly, did it manage that if it not supernatural, Dresden?"

"Some sort of electromagnetic tachyon deflector field or something. It stops normal attacks just as easily as it does any kind of magic." That one was an outright lie. I've been a craptastic liar for most of my life, but I've gotten a bit better at it over the years. Considering her reputation for being a highly skilled manipulator and consummate liar, it's hard not to wonder if the fact that I've gotten a bit better at both of those things over the years was due to Lash's influence. I tried to ignore the feminine chuckles echoing in the back of my mind.

"And this Evangelion has some countermeasure to this defensive field?" If Morgan caught my lie he gave no sign of it, and Morgan wasn't the kind of guy who'd just sit back and keep cool if he thought I was lying. If he wasn't screaming accusations and threats in my face, then he probably thought that I was telling the truth. Of course, Morgan had never been that good at sorting out truth from lies anyway; like a lot of fanatics, he tended to assume that anything which matched his worldview had to be true, and anything that conflicted with it had to be false.

"Yeah, the Evangelion can produce the same kind of field as these creatures, so it's the only thing that's capable of dealing with these things." Even though I was being deliberately vague, Gendo probably wouldn't be happy if he found out just how much I'd told Morgan about the AT field, since Nerv hated sharing information of any sort, but it's not like I've ever really cared whether Gendo approves of my actions or not.

Morgan gave a vague grunt of acknowledgement. "So Dresden, if all this is completely normal mortal affairs, why are you mixed up in it?"

"It pays the bills." I answered with a shrug. When it looked like I might be stuck with a pissed off Morgan if I didn't give him more than that, I decided to offer him another true but less than complete answer. "There's a lot of money and power tied up in this. I make sure they don't have the Vampire Courts, Faeries, Fomor, and every two-bit wackjob dark wizard trying to get a slice of the pie."

That got a vague scowl and a slight nod from Morgan. "I see." I guess Morgan couldn't find anything particularly objectionable about that; keeping the rest of the supernatural world from screwing the normal humans over too badly was one of the more respectable things a wizard could do with their time.

"Well, now that I've been a good boy and answered your questions, I think it's time I got to ask one of my own." Morgan frowned, but didn't tell me to piss off right away, so I figured asking was safe. "Why'd you blow your cover like that? Kinda hard to keep investigating what's going on here now that you can't stay under the radar anymore."

Morgan got that confused look on his face that usually shows up whenever he has to think about something more complicated than killing things that violate the Council's laws. "Those two children would likely have been crushed if I hadn't intervened, Dresden."

"Well, yeah, but…" I trailed off as I realized just how stupid my question really was. I was used to thinking of Morgan as nothing more than humongous asshole that fanatically enforced the Council's laws and took a fiendish delight in making my life a living hell. It is very satisfying to think that every person who's mean to you is really nothing more than a nasty, petty asshole who dislikes you for nasty, petty asshole reasons. Problem was, people are rarely neat little one-dimensional caricatures like that.

Much as I disliked him, Morgan was one of the good guys. Don't get me wrong, Morgan had made my life pretty unpleasant for several years, but it wasn't like he was just doing it for shits and giggles; he genuinely believed that I was just another bad guy who'd beaten the system and gotten away with murder. He'd even admitted he had been wrong about me, or at least as close as someone like him could ever come to making that kind of confession.

The guy had put saving innocent lives ahead of his mission, and faced down a monster that was completely out of his league without flinching. I could respect that; in fact, that was the sort of thing I probably would have done in his shoes. Hell's bells, if things had worked out differently, and I had been raised and trained by a proper responsible wizard instead of a crazy warlock we might have been able to get along; maybe we could even have been friends.

"Sorry." Saying that word to Morgan was about as much fun as chewing a bunch of broken glass. "Sometimes I forget that just because we hate each other's guts doesn't mean we're not both good guys."

Morgan glanced at me oddly for a moment, and then gave a slight nod and grunt. I was grateful he didn't feel the need to give any further response; that would have just made things difficult and awkward. If this were one of those happy stories, out new understanding of each other would have spawned a strong, lasting friendship. Sadly, that's not the way the real world works. I was who I was, he was who he was, and even if we'd gotten to the point where neither one of us thought the other was pure evil, we had way too much history for us to ever actually get along.

That became all too apparent a moment later, when Morgan's face scrunched up into a furious scowl. "Speaking of children, I see you neglected to mention a few things about the pilot, Dresden." I looked over my shoulder, and saw that the techs had finally hooked up a reserve power supply to Unit 01 and gotten Shinji out of the entry plug. The kid looked like hell, but I didn't see any actual injuries. "Child soldiers, Dresden?"

"I don't like it either, but only kids can pilot those things. Something to do with being born after the Second Impact." Morgan was still scowling. "It's not like we haven't exhausted every other possibility; we even tried hitting the thing with a N2 bomb before we sent the kid out. It was the only way."

Morgan's scowl softened a bit, but he still looked very unhappy. "That's always been your problem, Dresden." The warden gave a nasty smirk and added. "Well, one of your problems, you're also reckless and shortsighted. However, what's at issue now is while you're not evil, but when your back is up against the wall, you'll bend or even break the rules if that's what it takes to win."

"Oh shove it up your ass, Morgan. I know you've bent the rules too; hell's bells, you bent the rules more than once just to try and come after me."

For a second I wondered if I might be pushing the man a bit too far, but instead of snapping at me Morgan just went disturbingly calm. "I know my own past, Dresden, I don't need you to remind me of it. However, I never broke the Laws."

"Stars and stones, Morgan! That was a long time ago! And it was in self-defense!" Now I was the one who was pissed off; I do not like being reminded of what happened the day I killed Justin. "What the hell happened to the whole 'I don't think you're evil' thing?"

Morgan crossed his arms over his chest and met my anger with pure stoicism. "It doesn't matter if your actions justified, you still broke one of the Laws. Someday, when you find your back against the wall and your options running low, you might break the Laws again. And I'm sure if you did it would be for a very good and noble reason, and you'll truly believe that you're doing the right thing … but the road to hell is paved with good intentions, Dresden."

"Hell's bells Morgan, you almost sound like you're worried about me."

"I would take no pleasure if executing you if it became necessary, Dresden. See that it does not." Morgan glanced at the Security and Intelligence men, still remaining a respectful distance away from the two of us. "Do your mortal associates intend to detain me?"

"Nah, I'll clear it up."

"Good. I will give the Council the information you shared with me. I will also inform the regional Warden-commander that these attacks are, for the moment, a mortal concern."

"Right." Morgan and I swapped an awkward sort of grunt-nod goodbye. Sometimes, I really miss the days when we could just be as nasty as we pleased to each other instead of this mutual respect-but-dislike thing we had now. My life was a lot less complicated back when I just hated him.

*Break*

The post-battle briefing proved to be relatively … erm, brief. Not having the Bastard-in-Chief around probably contributed to that, since Fuyutsuki wasn't the type to waste time with power plays, internal politics, and subtly reminding us that he was in charge while Gendo was away. It probably also helped that Ritsuko and Misato also wanted to keep things short, since one of them had a relatively intact Angel corpse to analyze this time, and the other had a mildly mutinous pilot to deal with.

"So, Mr. Dresden, you believe we will not have any further problems with your fellow wizards?"

"Not for the moment, at least." I shrugged, and added. "Of course, just because they won't interfere doesn't mean they won't keep an eye on us, and the not interfering might change at some point if they dig up some of our secrets or decide we're not doing a good enough job. 'course, if that happens they're hardly going to be the only ones sticking their noses into our business."

Once that was dealt with, I wound up following Ritsuko and her research team over to the Fourth Angel's remains. With all the science people and their high-tech gear around I couldn't actually do much in the way of magical investigating, but I could at least gather some more samples to mess around with. At the very least, I would have more to work with than the bits of Angel-goo that was all that most-definitely-not-Sachiel had left behind.

With as busy as all the techs were, it took about half an hour before Maya finally got all the samples together for me. "Thanks Maya." Half a second after the words left my mouth I mentally whapped myself upside the head; among the various bits of culture shock I'd been introduced to during the move was the fact that being a first-name basis could be a big deal in Japan.

Which is why I was surprised when the fact that I'd used her first name got no reaction out of Maya. Instead, all I got was a distracted-sounding, "Oh, no problem Mr. Dresden," that came after about five seconds of awkward silence.

Being way too chivalrous for my own good, I decided to find out what was bugging her. "Something wrong?"

Maya gave a twitch of her head and seemed to regain her focus. "Oh, nothing serious. I was just wondering why Shinji suddenly went Leeroy Jenkins on us. I hadn't expected him to do something like that; he's normally such a nice, quiet boy." Before the conversation could continue, Ritsuko called out that she needed Maya's help with whatever she was working on, and Maya rushed off to go help her boss.

It took me a moment to figure out exactly what Maya had meant, but eventually I remembered hearing the whole Leeroy Jenkins thing before during the Arcanos games over at Billy's place. Apparently it was some kind of internet thing; all I knew was that people started shouting it whenever my barbarian got bored of listening to villains monologue and just started killing everything. I have to deal with enough clichéd villain monologues in my day job, I'm not going to listen to them during my fun time too.

I made a mental note to see about recruiting Maya if I ever got around to starting up an Arcanos game at Nerv. People need a few hobbies to keep themselves busy when we're not saving the world.

I had the samples from the Fourth Angel about halfway back to my Nerv lab when I heard the unmistakable sounds of someone beating the crap out of a vending machine. "Stupid piece of crap, give me the soda I paid for!" The sound of a foot slamming into the plastic side of a vending machine joined Misato's voice in echoing down the hallway.

Sure enough, Nerv's operations director was in the process of wailing on a soda machine like it was a redheaded stepchild. "Well gee, I didn't expect the Fifth Angel to show up this soon. Think you can hold Cokeiel off long enough for me to get up to the command center and scramble our defenses?"

"Oh, hello Harry." Misato glared at the vending machine. "I don't suppose you could magic a couple cokes out of this thing, could you? Actually, while you're at it, turn those cokes into beers too."

"Sorry, I haven't quite mastered the art of turning soda into beer yet." I took a seat on one of the benches. "So, I'm guessing your little talk with Shinji went perfectly well, and everything's fine now?"

Judging by the way Misato stiffened at Shinji's name, I figured I'd hit the mark, not that it had been all that hard to guess. "If you want me to talk about Shinji, I'm definitely going to need a beer."

"I've got a couple stashed away in my lab." Normally I was reluctant to share my stockpile of Mac's microbrew; I'd have to go all the way back to Chicago if I wanted more, and that would be a huge pain in the ass. However, Misato had clearly gone through a rough day, and she was a friend, so I guess I could spare one beer for her.

Once we got to my lab, I cleared off random debris covering one of my work tables, and offered Misato the chair before grabbing a suitable crate to serve as my own seat. That done, I went to the icebox stocked with actual ice, and pulled out two bottles of Mac's dark beer. I wordlessly handed one off to Misato, and set the other down in front of my own seat.

Mac probably would have been horrified when I handed a bottle of his dark brew to Misato, and she proceeded to chug it all down in about fifteen seconds. I know I was. Once the entire bottle of Mac's precious brew was gone, Misato let out a loud enough shout of appreciation that I'm glad my lab is in a relatively isolated part of the Geofront, or people might have gotten the wrong idea about what the two of us were up to.

Once she came down from her beergasm, I decided it was probably time to get down to business. "So, what happened with Shinji?"

The lingering smile Mac's beer had placed on Misato's face instantly transformed into a frown. "It didn't go well." Misato let out a frustrated growl. "He doesn't want to be a pilot."

"Well, you can't exactly blame him. A month ago, he was an ordinary kid going to school, and now all of a sudden we've stuck him into this crazy situation and expecting him to go out and fight life-and-death battles. If I was in the kid's shoes, I wouldn't want to be a pilot either."

"It's not that I don't understand why he doesn't want to be a pilot." Misato sighed and crossed her arms on the table before resting her chin on top of them. "But if he goes into combat with that kind of attitude, it's likely to get him and a whole lot of other people killed. Sometimes I really regret leaving the army; I know we're doing good work here, but it was a lot easier to stay professional and detached when I had a hundred trained adult soldiers under my command instead of a scared kid."

Misato sighed and shifted posture, resting her chin on her left hand while her right idly played with her empty beer bottle. "I suppose it's my own fault, really. After all, he's just a kid; I can't expect him to turn into a good little soldier overnight. Plus, I'm the one who designed most of out pilot training protocols, so if he's having trouble it's probably because I messed up somewhere. How can he be a good soldier when his commander dropped the ball?

"I guess it must have been because I based so much of our training program on my experiences with Asuka. She's … she's not perfect, but the one thing she's never had any problems with is persuading her to pilot the Eva. She's probably been spitting fire over the fact that she missed out on the chance to fight the first two Angels. I knew Shinji didn't have the right kind of attitude to really be a soldier, but I didn't think about changing our training program to deal with that."

"So we wound up training him how to fight in the Eva, but not why he should fight, or how to handle the stress of combat." I grimaced as some less than pleasant memories of my own past sprang to mind. "I had a similar problem back when I was a little older than Shinji. My first master was a dark wizard; he taught me a whole lot about how to use my power, and a lot of it was nasty. I wound up in pretty unhealthy place, until my second master spent a couple years teaching me the really important stuff; why I should use my power."

"Exactly. My training program wound up focusing so much on giving Shinji the skills he needed to survive that it's neglected getting him prepared psychologically. What a complete disaster."

"It's not that bad; we didn't have much time, and teaching the kid enough to stay alive in a fight was more important in the short term. A living Shinji with a bunch of psychological problems is still better off than a dead one who's got his head on straight. Besides, even if you spent all the training time on getting him mentally prepared for combat, there's only so much you can do to train someone to handle life-and-death combat."

"Yeah, there's no substitute for actually having people try to kill you. We probably shouldn't mention that to the Commander though; he might decide to have his security take pot-shots at Shinji to help toughen him up."

I let out a small snort of laughter; that did sound like the sort of unnecessarily traumatic asshole thing the Bastard would do to his son. Misato sighed again. "I guess there's nothing for it; we'll do what we can to help Shinji adapt, and hopefully he'll learn to deal with the pressure before it breaks him."

I scowled at how cold those words sounded. "Hell's bells, Misato. You're talking about a kid!"

For a minute I thought Misato might slap me, but after a moment the anger leaked out of her and left nothing but weary resignation behind. "I know. He's just a kid, and he shouldn't have to deal with all of this." Misato took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. "But he's going to have to learn to handle it; It's not right or fair, but that's how it is."

"I know. God forgive us all, but putting kids in those things is the only way to stop the Third Impact. But does Shinji have to be one of those pilots?"

Misato frowned down at the table for a while, and then slowly shook her head. "We still need him for now. Rei is still in no condition to pilot, Asuka is still in Germany, and we don't have a Fourth Child yet. All those things are subject to change, though. Once we get to the point where Nerv can survive without him … maybe it would be better to just let him go home, and forget about Eva."

"Probably. Of course, then we would have to put some other kid who doesn't deserve it any more than he does out there to replace him." I drained the rest of my beer, and was tempted to go get another one. "What the hell are we doing to these kids, Misato?"

"We're doing what we have to do to survive. It's not like we would be doing the kids a favor if we all decided to just lie down and the let the Angels kill us off."

"Yeah, I keep hearing that, from myself as much as anyone else. I know it's true … but I still don't think I'd ever be able to forgive myself if one of those kids dies before all this is over."

"Then we just need to make sure we don't let any of them die." Misato's voice was barely above a whisper. The tactical commander of Nerv slowly rose from her chair. "Thanks for the beer Harry, think I'm gonna go home now and have half a dozen more."

I let out a rueful chuckle "Guess the talk didn't help you feel any better then."

"The day I stop feeling bad about sending these kids into combat is the day I'll start worrying." Misato's shoulders slumped.

"I wonder how Fuyutsuki and Ritsuko handle it?" I didn't bother asking about Gendo; we both know he's far too much of an ice-cold bastard to worry about that kind of thing.

"I don't know about the Sub-Commander, but Rits … back in college, she smoked maybe three or four cigarettes a day. Now, she goes through two packs on a good day, worse if she's under stress. Of course, I'm not one to talk; I've been drinking more than usual lately." Misato took our empty beer bottles and chucked them in the garbage. "Maybe we'll get lucky, and all our unhealthy habits will end up killing us before the Angels get around to it."

Once Misato went back to her place to get hammered, I got down to my own work. I didn't expect to get much out of the Angel samples, and I wasn't in the mood for doing a lot of heavy analytical work in any case, so I went with something meticulous but simple, and updated Little Tokyo-3 instead.

Little Tokyo-3 was an incredibly useful tool, but keeping it up to date was a huge pain in the ass. A city is a constantly growing, changing and evolving thing, especially a city like Tokyo-3 that still had a lot of construction occurring on the outskirts. Nerv's resources did at least ensure that I was kept up to date on any changes to the city's geography without having to do all the legwork, but I still had to make all the changes to the model of the city by myself. I wasn't about to let someone else mess around with a complicated and delicate tool like Little Tokyo-3, especially since there was enough energy stored in it to do some nasty and potentially fatal things to me if anything went wrong.

The Angels weren't helping matters in the slightest. If the first two were anything to judge by, every single one of them was going to do their own little bit of urban redecorating when they attacked. After spending the better part of a couple of hours removing every single building that had been destroyed and updating the ones that had been damaged, I was getting pretty close to done. It wasn't exactly hard work, but since it was so incredibly detail-oriented it took pretty much all my concentration.

"Hello Mister. Dresden."

"Bwah!" Apparently Rei's knack for being quiet wasn't limited to simply not saying much, because until she spoke up from about five feet behind me I'd had no idea she was even in the room; she'd snuck up on me like some sort of blue-haired half-alien eyepatch-wearing ninja girl clone thing. "Rei … you're … well there you are."

Rei, as was her nature simply regarded me silently.

"I was just uh – bwah!" I made a suitably dramatic gesture with my staff. "You know, it's a wizard like battlecry – strikes fear into the hearts of…" Rei simply continued looking at me flatly as I continued to sound like a complete moron. "You know, it's not exactly a good idea to sneak up on a wizard when he's making with the juju."

Rei cocked her head a tiny bit to the side, then straightened it and slowly nodded. I might have a soft spot for the girl, but she can still weird me out occasionally. I would've felt a lot better if her facial expression had changed the slightest bit the entire time I had been making a fool out of myself.

"So … uh … what can I do for you?"

Rei wordlessly pulled out the trio of the dog-eared paperbacks I'd loaned her the last time I visited her before she got out of the hospital, and offered them to me.

"Oh, right." I took the books back from Rei, and stuffed each book into a different pocket of my duster; not only is it stylish and enchanted enough to protect me from armor-piercing bullets, it also has a lot of very big pockets. "Say, I've got plenty of books back at my apartment; want to come by and have a look at my bookshelf, see if anything catches your eye?"

Before Rei could answer my question, something very unexpected happened. Her stomach let out a loud, hungry growl.

She might be a freaky humanoid abomination, but she also a growing teenager, and teenagers are always hungry. "Wanna grab some food first? My treat."

Rei nodded, and after a moment added. "I do not eat meat."

"That's fine, it'll make ordering a lot easier."

* * *

"I'll take the double cheeseburger meal with fries and a coke, and a double veggie-burger meal with … hang on a second." I turned my attention away from the drive-thru. "Rei, do you want fries, or onion rings?"

The girl in question considered the matter for several seconds, before quietly answering. "I am sorry, but I am not familiar with either of those things."

Well, that wouldn't do at all. Gendo had done a lot of things wrong by the kid, but never giving her a chance to eat french fries or onions rings ranked … well if I'm honest it wasn't the worst thing he'd ever done to her, but it had to be in the top ten. I couldn't let this stand. "We'll get both. What do you want to drink?"

"Water will be sufficient."

I sighed, and decided that it was my duty to help expand her horizons. I turned back to the drive-thru and finished up the order. "With the veggie burger, I'll have medium fries, medium onion rings and a large chocolate milkshake. Oh yeah, give us a couple crowns too." The person on the other end of the drive-thru speaker offered an answer that was almost comprehensible; I was still suppressing my magic, so I'm pretty sure that wasn't my fault.

Once we'd gotten our food, I pulled out the pair of cheap cardboard crowns; unlike a certain Faerie godmother, Rei put hers on without a single word of complaint. I then spent the rest of the drive back to my apartment struggling against the urge to break down laughing; something about the combination of Rei's blandly serious expression and the ridiculous-looking cheap paper crown just cracked me up.

Once the two of us got to my apartment, I disabled the wards, and invited Rei in; I wasn't sure if her half-Angel nature would make an invitation necessary, but even if crossing my threshold was a non-issue Rei would probably just stand outside my door if I didn't let her know it was alright to come in. A quick "flickum bicus" lit the candles and gave us enough light to work with, and we carried our food over to my comfy couch and set it down on the table. Once I was seated, Mouse plodded out of my bedroom and came over to rest his head in my lap while I idly scratched his ears with the hand that wasn't full of burger.

I had planned to try for a bit of small talk while we ate, but obviously I had forgotten what a hungry teenager can be like around food. Rei's table manners were completely perfect, but she still never went more than a few seconds between swallowing and taking another bite of food, and all her food was gone before I was even halfway through my own burger.

Once she was done eating, Rei sat very politely on my couch, watching me eat. At first I thought she was just being her normal self, but then a thought struck me and I emptied out about half of my fries onto my burger wrapper, then nudged it in Rei's direction. "I don't think I can finish all of these, you want some?"

"I have had sufficient food." The girl answered.

"Alright, but if you want them you can have them." I couldn't help but smile when, after about fifteen seconds of polite hesitation, Rei started in on the fries I'd offered with her usual efficiency.

I still had a few bites of burger left when Rei spoke up. "Mister Dresden, may I ask you something?"

"Sure." I offered around a mouthful of burger, before washing it down with some coke. "By the way, I think you know me well enough to call me Harry by now." If Misato could be on a first name basis with Shinji, I could be on one with Rei.

Rei nodded, and then continued. "I do not understand why the Third Child refused to obey Lieutenant Colonel Katsuragi's order to withdraw."

I sat back and took a bit to think my answer over carefully; I was pretty sure what I said next could have a big effect on what she would think of Shinji. "Well, Rei, Shinji hasn't had very much training, so when he got put into a combat situation he wasn't fully prepared to deal with it."

"He was given an order. It is the duty of all pilots to obey their orders without question or hesitation." Rei rattled the statement off as if it had been drilled into her head a thousand times, probably because it had been. Gendo Ikari was that kind of guy who would train the girl who was supposed to be his ultimate pilot to be completely and unconditionally obedient.

However, as Morgan will explain at great length to anyone who asks, I've never been one for following the rules. "Look, Rei, obeying orders in a combat situation can be important, but if anyone ever tells you to do something that you think is wrong, or gives you an order that's really stupid, then you don't have to follow it, alright?"

"Even if it is an order from the Commander?"

"Especially if it's an order from him. He might be in charge of Nerv, and it might even be that we need someone ruthless like him who's willing to do whatever it takes to beat the Angels, but that doesn't change the fact that the man is a rat bastard."

Rei nodded, and then remained silent for a few seconds before she came up with her next question "What criteria should I use to determine which orders are morally questionable or stupid?"

"Um … well, if you're not sure, ask me first, but generally it's better to decide those kinds of things on your own." I shrugged and shifted around a bit on the couch. "That's what's really important; learning to figure out these kinds of things for yourself, knowing what's right and making the choice to do it. You get too used to doing what other people tell you to do, and it can get you into trouble."

"Would that not also mean that I should disobey any order from you if I felt it was objectionable?"

"Yes." If anyone else had asked that question I might have thought she was teasing me, but I had yet to confirm that Rei had a sense of humor. I made a mental note to work on that; given the fact that nobody could beat Rei's poker face, she could probably become the world's greatest smartass ever if I trained her right. Molly was pretty much a fully trained wizard now after all, so I needed a new apprentice, even if Rei would only be my apprentice in wiseassery.

"So, anything else you wanted to ask, grasshopper?"

Rei remained silent for a while, either because she was coming up with another question or because she wasn't quite sure what to make of her new nickname. Mouse, obviously satisfied with the amount of attention he'd gotten from me, moved over to Rei, and after a moment the girl cautiously started scratching his ears the exact same way I had been doing before. Rei shifted around on the couch a bit to find accommodate the large dog's desire for attention, and her new position exposed a little bit of silver chain running down her neckline, presumably some kind of necklace or something that had been hidden under her clothing before now. That caught me by surprise; Rei's generally not the type to wear any jewelry or really care about her appearance at all. I considered asking about it, but then Rei spoke up. "The reactivation test for Unit 00 will occur next week. Will you be present for the reactivation?"

That surprised me a bit; it sounded like she wanted me to be there, and I don't think she had ever just come out and told me she wanted something before, even indirectly. Of course, I had been planning to show up anyway, and considering how things went last time I wouldn't have been surprised if the Bastard or Ritsuko asked me to be there. "Yeah, I'll be there. You worried about getting back into Unit 00 after what happened last time?"

"No." And then the darndest thing happened.

Rei smiled.

* * *

If mental images aren't enough, there's a picture link in my profile of Rei wearing her crown. General consensus is that it is adorable.


	12. Harry XI

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

I woke up the next morning to Misato pounding on my door. "Shinji's run away."

I stood there in my oversized Star Wars t-shirt, boxers, and the bathrobe I'd thrown on before answering the door for a while as those words made their way through my sleep-addled mind.

Oh. Well that's not good.

I distractedly invited Misato in, and went back to the fridge to grab a coke. Making coffee would take too long, and a coke at least had caffeine in it. Misato and I took a seat at the Kitchen table, and I shook off the last bits of lingering sleepiness. "Alright, so he's run away. Did he leave a note or anything to tell you –"

Misato pulled out a single sheet of notebook paper covered in neat kanji, which Lash promptly converted to English text for me. "Nothing useful there, like anything to let us know where he's gone." Misato summarized for me. "Just letting me know he's leaving voluntarily, and telling me not to worry." Misato practically growled out the second half of that sentence, and her hands got about halfway through curling up into fists. "Idiot. As if there's any way we wouldn't be worried about him when he's run off by himself!" By the end of the sentence Misato's voice had gotten loud enough to rouse Mouse from his slumber.

After taking a few deep breaths to try and calm herself down a bit, Misato continued. "The note does look like his handwriting, and between that and the tone I'm pretty sure it's authentic."

By now my brain had clicked into gear; back when I'd been getting by Private Investigator License I'd worked for an outfit called Ragged Angel Investigations that specialized in finding missing kids, so this wouldn't be my first rodeo. While we could never completely rule out foul play of the mundane or freaky type, notes could be faked after all, it was far more likely that Shinji really had decided to bug out. Considering what he'd been through ever since coming to Tokyo-3, and especially what happened after his run-in with the Fourth Angel, it wasn't completely shocking. "Do you have any idea how long he's been gone?"

"Can't say for sure." Misato answered, looking a little sheepish. "When I got back last night his door was closed and I didn't see him, but I thought he was just sulking in his room after I yelled at him for disobeying orders. I didn't check on him until it was time for breakfast this morning, so…"

Well that didn't help narrow it down much; he had probably run off shortly after leaving base, but we couldn't be sure about that. "Right, first things first, call up his friends, whoever was taking care of him before he moved to Tokyo-3, and anyone else he might contact." I frowned as another issue sprang to mind. "Isn't he supposed to have some of those security goons keeping an eye on him?"

"Yes, but he slipped past them." Mouse came over to lean against Misato and her chair, earning him a few distracted pats on the side. "Looks like telling them to try and stay hands-off and give the pilots enough space to live a normal life was a bad idea."

"Well, at least we can put some of those guys anywhere he's likely to show up, and keep an eye out for any purchases he makes off his Nerv account." I saw Misato tense up as I suggested involving the Security and Intelligence division in the search for Shinji, and I finally figured out that there was probably a reason she had come to me first instead of going straight through Nerv's official channels.

It's not my fault; I'm a little slow when I haven't had my morning coffee, that's all. "Or I could just help you find him by myself, without having to cause a big ruckus and drag in half the staff at Nerv."

Let out a very quiet sigh of relief. "Thanks." If it got out that Shinji had run away, it would cause trouble for her and the kid; at the very least Shinji's security detail would drop the hands-off approach and keep a much closer eye on him, and Misato would almost certainly have to answer some awkward questions about why the child under her guardianship was running away.

Misato reached into one of the pockets on her jacket, and pulled out a hairbrush with several short brown hairs clinging to the bristles. "Normally, I'd comment on how you're not supposed to have any hair samples for critical Nerv staff lying around, but I can't complain right now." To be fair, I doubt most of the Nerv staff does a perfect job of following the supernatural security regs I drew up; when most folks don't even really believe in magic it can be tricky to convince them that they need to thoroughly destroy any stray bits of their own hair or blood.

Of course, I could have gotten Shinji's hair from Nerv's official stash of hair samples, but that was kept under security tight security, and getting access to it would've made it harder keep the fact that Shinji was AWOL on the down low. After I'd plucked Shinji's hair off the brush, it was time to start making with the mojo. I got a solid fix on Shinji, so he was probably still in Tokyo-3 or its immediate vicinity, somewhere off to the northwest of the apartment, and on the surface.

My standard tracking spell is really more of a magical compass; it can tell you which direction to go, but not how far away whoever you're looking for is. At least I'd finally gotten around to making it work in three dimensions; in a city like Tokyo-3 with skyscrapers and the Geofront a two-dimensional tracking spell couldn't cut it. "Alright, now we know which way he went; if you want, I can go into Nerv; from my lab, I can pinpoint him using Little Tokyo-3, and direct you from there."

Misato considered for a moment, then shook her head. "In the time it takes you to get down to Nerv HQ we could probably have already found him. Besides, I'd rather have a second set of eyes with me on the ground than someone half a city away trying to give me directions over the phone."

"Alright, let's do this." I was about halfway to the door before remembering that I was still wearing nothing more than a bathrobe, boxers, and a ratty old t-shirt, so our departure was briefly delayed while I took a moment to slap on a fresh t-shirt and actually put some proper pants on, as well as switching the bathrobe out for my duster and grabbing my staff. "Okay, this time I'm actually ready to go. Mouse, you gonna come with us?"

Mouse let out an emphatic whuff that came out a little muffled thanks to the fact that he already had his leash in his mouth.

* * *

"Huh. Well that's not what I was expecting."

I wasn't sure what Shinji would be up to when we finally got done tracking him down, but from what I knew of the kid and what Misato told me if I'd had to guess it would have been either wandering aimlessly or just sitting somewhere reasonably comfortable and brooding.

I definitely hadn't expected to find him hanging out with a girl. The two of them were in the middle of a grassy field, and Shinji had his head resting in the girl's lap. The girl herself looked to be around the same age as him, though it looked like she was a bit of an early bloomer, and attractive enough that I was impressed that Shinji had apparently managed to catch her eye. Since she had the same sailor-esque school uniform that Rei wore, it seemed reasonable to assume that she went to his school. Shinji and the girl seemed to be talking, but we were still too far away to clearly make out what they were saying.

"So, looks like little Shinji just wanted a bit of private time with his girlfriend." Misato couldn't quite manage to keep herself from sounding amused by this development. "I'll have to scold him for worrying me so much, and for not introducing me to her." I almost felt sorry for Shinji; Misato would get a lot of teasing mileage out of this, and if I was completely honest with myself I'd probably be helping her. Then again, with a girlfriend to help boost his confidence up a bit, Shinji would probably be able to handle the occasional bit of teasing.

And then Mouse tensed up and let out a low rumble of warning, staring intently at the girl.

That got my attention. Mouse is a quiet, amiable sort of fellow, and not inclined to growling without a very good reason. Nine times out of ten, that good reason had to do with some sort of bad supernatural business being afoot. There are plenty of supernatural things out there that can look like normal people, and looking like an attractive teenage girl was usually a good choice for getting any teenage boy to lower their guard.

Misato glanced down at the growling dog, and then slipped a hand into her jacket, resting it lightly on the pistol holstered underneath. "Trouble?"

"Probably, Mouse thinks something up with the girl. I can veil us to get us in close; we won't be completely invisible, but as long as we don't make any noise they won't see us unless they're looking closely." It's a pity Molly wasn't around; she'd always had a knack for illusion work, and it's only because of training her that I'd gotten passably competent at throwing up a veil of any sort.

Misato nodded. "So, we're gonna go spy on the lovebirds? How scandalous." I barely noticed the note of tension underneath her teasing. "Don't suppose the dog can elaborate?"

"Alright Mouse, one bark if she's a demon, two barks if she's a vampire, three barks if she's enthralled…"

Mouse let out an annoyed whuff of breath, and refused to meet my eyes.

"Right, dumb idea." I don't know how my dog got so good at me feel like I'm a complete idiot sometimes. "Let's just make with the sneaking."

With the veil around the three of us, we could move relatively unseen, though if anyone was looking closely they might have noticed a ripple effect whenever we moved a bit too quickly. However, since nobody started randomly shooting wildly in our general direction while yelling about how they needed to get to da choppa, I figured we probably hadn't been made.

Once we got close enough to actually hear the conversation and get a better look at the two kids, I could tell from the redness around his eyes that Shinji had been crying, and was currently pouring his heart out while the girl calmly listened with a concerned look on her face and made occasional sympathetic noises. "And – and then my father that 'the spare' was useless. How could my own father say something like that about me? And when I piloted it anyway he didn't even care; he didn't say a single word of thanks, or even ask if I was alright or check on me while I was in the hospital. And – and when I ran into him coming off the elevator he just glared at me, like I was a bug or something…"

Needless to say, Shinji's list of things his father had done to him was rather extensive. After a moment's consideration, I restrained my initial instinct to step in. In the past, I probably would have jumped in head first and asked questions later, but over the years I've learned the hazards of not looking before you leap. There are plenty of things out there that can pretend to be human, and Shinji didn't seem to be in any immediate danger, so the smart thing to do was sit back for a bit until this creature gave us some clue what we were up against.

The thing pretending to be a teenaged girl cooed sympathetically, and gently stroked Shinji's cheek. The boy ate up the caress like a starving man who had just found a huge cheeseburger. "Poor Shinji. You have so much pain, so many burdens, such a cruel father. Is everyone so cruel to you? Is there nobody who is kind to you? What of the other pilot, the wounded one? What of the guardian who watches over you? Is the wizard Dresden a heartless monster as well?"

"No, well, there's this one guy at my school who beat me up, but I guess I deserved that since it's my fault his sister got hurt. If I hadn't been such a weakling and –" The girl cut him off, whispering more sweet nothings in his ears.

From how she was drawing out all his worst memories, I was inclined to guess that we might be up against a Skavis White Court vamp; feeding on despair is their big thing, and even though the Jades were hostile to the White Court showing up in their backyard, that didn't mean the White Court would never turn up. I dropped that thought a moment later; if she was feeding on Shinji, Mouse wouldn't be alright with just sitting back and watching, he'd be ripping the thing's throat out. Most likely she was building up to the 'I am your only real friend, so you should do what I tell you to' line, which was a pretty sure-fire way to manipulate a kid as affection-starved as Shinji.

I was badly tempted to just take her down then and there, but knowledge is power when it comes to taking on supernatural critters. With as close as Shinji was to the thing, I couldn't just blast her with one of my big attack spells without a risk of hitting Shinji too, and unless I took her down with my first shot she could easily take Shinji hostage. That's not to mention that the kid's loyalty to Nerv was already close to nonexistent, and Shinji would not react well to me and Misato popping up and, as far as he would know, murdering an innocent girl.

Sometimes, the hardest thing to do in this line of work is to force yourself to hold back and wait for the right moment to act.

Meanwhile, Shinji continued speaking. "The others. Well, they're not like my father. I mean, they're not bad people or anything but…"

"But you do not believe that they truly care about you." The creature supplied for him.

"No. they're only nice to me because they have to be, because I'm a pilot. I don't want to be a pilot, but it's the only thing that makes anyone notice me, and even if they're only kind to me to make me pilot the Eva, that's still better than nothing, isn't it? Or at least, that's what I thought but I know that deep down they all still think I'm a useless weak coward, so it doesn't really help at all."

"I don't think you're useless, or weak, or a coward. I don't care if you pilot the Eva or not, Shinji."

"But I have to pilot the Eva." The boy groaned miserably. I can't run away forever. Sooner or later they'll find me, and then they'll…"

"They won't." A smile played over the girl's features, and every instinct I had told me she was about to make her move. "I can make sure they'll never find you, that you can live your life with me, in a place where everyone will care about you and be kind to you, and nobody will force you to pilot the Eva ever again. We'll make a bargain, and then –"

As soon as the word 'bargain' left her mouth, I knew what we up against; a faerie. I dropped the veil and gathered my will, but as fast as I was, Mouse was faster. About second after the Fae had outed herself two hundred pounds of angry dogosaurus slammed into her, knocking the Faerie flat on her back. Mouse latched his teeth over the Fae's throat, and let out a growl as soon as the girl so much as twitched; after that, she stayed very, very still.

"Mouse? Mr. Dresden? Misato?" Shinji had been knocked out the girl's lap when Mouse tackled the Faerie girl, and looked halfway between confused and indignant. "What's going on? Why is Mouse mad at Natsuko?"

Lash whispered a few words into my ears. "Natsuko?" I smirked down at the pinned girl. "You picked a name that means 'summer child?' I thought you Faeries were supposed to be subtle." I stuffed my hands into my duster's pockets, and dug around for a bit until I found that rusty old nail I make a habit of keeping somewhere in there. Between the Faeries and the Fomor you never know when a bit of cold iron might come in handy. I pulled the old nail out and waved it in front of the pinned Faerie girl. The girl's eyes widened, and she tried to squirm out from under Mouse, but dog let out a soft rumble and tightened his grip on her throat a bit. "Now then, are you going to drop that glamour of yours voluntarily, or do I have to make you do it?" I casually tossed the nail up into air a few times. "Up to you if we do this the easy way or the hard way; either way works for me."

"Hey, don't hurt her!" I'll give Shinji credit for showing a bit of chivalry, even if it was misplaced under the circumstances.

The Faerie was quick to exploit the opportunity. "Shinji! Help me!" Fortunately, Shinji froze in place as he tried to figure out what he should do next, and before he could come up with a solution Misato put a gentle but firm hand on the boy's shoulder. The boy looked up at his guardian for a second, and then slumped down in resignation.

For once, I was grateful that Shinji didn't have much in the way of self-confidence; when I was his age, I probably would have gone rushing in to save the girl without a second thought. Truth be told, I still might have fallen for it if the roles were reversed.

"Looks like you just decided to do things the hard way, Faerie." I leaned down and tapped the blunt end of the nail against the Fae's forehead. That drew a shriek of pain from the Faerie that I still felt guilty about despite knowing that she wasn't really an ordinary human girl at all, and her false human appearance she'd adopted shattered. Her skin and hair both shifted to the pale white luminescence of the Sidhe. Her body also shifted, fingers and limbs elongating slightly, while the lines of her face shifted to the subtly alien appearance that marked her true race. Finally, her ordinary brown eyes changed to a brilliant green, and became vertically slit, like a cat's eyes. In the middle of her forehead, there was an angry red burn mark, exactly where I'd tapped her with the nail. Shinji was staring at the changed girl in open-mouthed shock, while Misato's reaction was more restrained.

So, I'd just foiled the plans of a Sidhe. In the short term, it was a relief to know we were dealing with one of the Sidhe; for all their power, outside of the Nevernever Sidhe can't really take direct action against someone who isn't bound to one of the courts. She could try to persuade me with honeyed words or befuddle me with a glamour, but she couldn't just call up some Summer fire to fry me to a crisp. Lesser Fae weren't nearly so restricted, and while Mouse is strong, there are plenty of things out there with enough muscle to cause him trouble. Sidhe aren't that dangerous in the immediate physical sense, so were reasonably safe for the moment.

The downside was that we were only safe for the moment. Sidhe are the top dogs in the Faerie Courts; lots of power, lots of influence, and like most immortal beings they can nurse a grudge for a really long time. She might not be able to do much to me directly, but she could always in a favor and set half a dozen ogres after me, which would still ruin my entire day. Needless to say, if I ever had the misfortune of crossing her path in the Nevernever, where her power was far less restrained, I might as well just stick my head between my legs and kiss my ass goodbye.

"I hope, now that the situation is clear, we can put aside any thoughts of unnecessary violence and resolve this in a civilized manner." The Sidhe kept her words pleasant enough, but I'd had enough run-ins with Faeries to hear the threat underneath them.

"Works for me, you promise to leave Shinji, me, and everyone else at Nerv alone, and I'm sure we can work something out."

A slight smile played over the captured Faerie's lips. "Perhaps a bargain can be agreed to. To begin, if your dog will consent to release me, I will promise my entirely peaceful intentions for the duration of this meeting."

Now it was time to get to the most annoying part of any conversation with a Faerie; trying to spot the loophole. "You won't attempt to magically influence us in any way, or take any action that would incite others to take action against us?"

"But of course not; such action would constitute a violation of our agreement. I trust that when you promise your own peaceful intentions you speak not only for yourself, but for your companions as well?"

I looked over at Misato, and got a quick nod from her; since we were dealing with supernatural weirdness, she seemed content to let me take the lead. I considered for a moment, and then accepted the Sidhe's terms nodded to Mouse. The dog released his grip on the Fae's throat, and after letting out one last growl of warning, got off the Sidhe and trotted over to Shinji's side. Despite releasing the Faerie girl, his eyes remained fixed on the Sidhe, and the message was clear: 'I am watching you.'

"Ah, much better." The young Sidhe lithely sprang to her feet and gave us all an entirely too friendly. "I do regret this misunderstanding, Wizard Dresden, but I understand that such things will happen at times."

"If you want to avoid any more misunderstandings, maybe you shouldn't be trying to trick a kid into making a bargain with you when he has no idea what he'd be getting himself into." Summer Fae tend to be real good at seeming all sweetness and light, but you always have to remember that they're still Faeries, and the Fae are not given to kindness and altruism. IF she was being nice to us, it was because she believed you could catch more flies with honey.

"I saw a child in pain, and offered him comfort; surely you can find nothing objectionable in that?" The Sidhe shot a radiant smile in Shinji's direction. "I do apologize for concealing my true nature from you, but I did not wish to startle you."

"Yeah, sure, you're just a good Samaritan; I'm sure after you were done helping him you were just going to ask him to give up his firstborn to you out of the kindness of your heart." I crossed my arms over my chest, and scowled down at the Sidhe. "Don't talk to the kid, don't even look at him; you're dealing with me now."

"So cold." The Faerie shifted her kindly gaze to me. "So distrusting. I know you have been touched by Winter, Mister Dresden, that you have suffered so many petty cruelties at the hands of Mab and her agents. It makes me sad, to see how deep the scars run, that you could not believe that there are those who would offer another kindness with no intention to deceive or manipulate." The Faerie stepped forward, and gently placed a hand over my heart. "You don't even realize how wounded you truly are. Please, let me help you."

I gently but firmly removed the Faerie's hand. "Yeah, sorry, not buying it."

The Sidhe sighed softly. "Don't you understand? I can help you. You don't have to hurt or distrust any more, I can fix it."

"I don't need fixing."

"You truly have been hurt and corrupted by Winter's touch, haven't you?" She looked sad enough that some naïve part of me couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't all just an act meant to manipulate me. "You don't even realize that you have the choice to turn away from all of this. Winter has made twisted you into the kind of person who hires out his services for money, who attacks without thinking, who willingly puts children into harm's way. You have to understand that things don't have to be that way anymore.

"Winter is dying.. Ever since the Second Impact the seasons have ceased their cycles, and Winter's power wanes with every passing day. Don't you understand what that means, Mr. Dresden? Can you imagine a world where the unending and vicious cycle of predator and pretty has finally been broken? Where the weak need not fear conquest and oppression at the hands of the strong? Without Winter, we could have a world where people help each other and we all focus on recovering from the Second Impact instead of seeing the death of half the world as an opportunity for more ruthless exploitation. The world needs to heal, Mr. Dresden, and I want to do whatever I can to help it heal. Is that such a terrible thing?"

You have to admit, when she put it like that, she did sound like a pretty nice Faerie. Maybe I was being unreasonable here; she just wanted to help us, and I was being so suspicious and distrusting. She could fix Shinji's issues with a snap of her fingers, just because it was the decent thing to do. It was hard not to be a bit tempted by an offer like that. It sounded –

Too good to be true.

"I've never met an altruistic Faerie in my life, and somehow I doubt you're the exception. I wasn't born yesterday, you know; however much you say you want to help us, if we let you then I'll bet within a few days you'll show up telling us how you need our help to settle your little grudge match with Winter, and since you were so nice to us we owe you." I took a deliberate step back from the Sidhe girl. "You want to kick your old nemesis – nemsises – nemesi – nemeses – um – your old enemies, while they're down, you go right ahead and do it, but leave me, Nerv, and especially the kid out of it." I took a step to the side, deliberately placing myself between Shinji and the Faerie, before fixing the girl with my nastiest glare.

"Why are you doing this, Mister Dresden?" I had to keep reminding myself that the mournful expression on her face was almost certainly an act. I'd learned a long time ago from my Godmother that the only reason a Faerie ever smiles is to distract you for long enough to stick the blade in, but this Sidhe girl still made it look so damn convincing. Hell's bells, maybe she really did feel bad about how nasty Winter was and genuinely want to help people; even if that were so, it didn't mean she wasn't trying to play me. Nice people can be just as manipulative as bastards sometimes; the only difference is that the nice ones expect you to be grateful to them afterwards.

"You have to understand Mister Dresden." She sounded somewhere between desperate and horribly confused now, as if she couldn't see why I would ever want to refuse her aid. "You don't have to help Winter anymore. You don't have to be a tool for the Leanansidhe. Winter can't control you anymore. Whatever obligations you have to them, whatever power they hold over you, I can end it. Please, let me help you, or if you must refuse my help then at least let me help Shinji."

"Y'know, you're starting to sound like a bit of a broken record when it comes to the whole 'I just want to help you' thing. Why don't you try a different line? Tell me how we could rule together, overthrow the emperor, bring order to the galaxy, all that crap. Or just tell me that you're my real mother."

"But I cannot say such things, Mister Dresden; you know that I can only speak the truth."

"Yeah, and yet somehow that never seems to stop Faeries from lying, it just means you're a bit more creative when you do it. Whatever your game is, I'm not falling for it; nobody's going to make a bargain with you, so why don't you make like a tree, and get the hell out of here."

The Sidhe gave a resigned sigh, and did impressive job of looking horribly saddened. "I understand. I hope that in time you will come to trust my intentions." She waved a hand, and a section of the open field slowly shifted into thick rainforest as she opened up a way into the Nevernever. "Should any of you wish to reconsider my offer, you need but invoke my name thrice, and I shall come to speak with you." The Faerie girl paused for a moment, and then an almost sheepish grin appeared on her face. "Ah, forgive me, but I just realized that I never properly introduced myself. I am Aurora."

Right as Aurora was about to step through her gate into the Nevernever, Shinji called out to her. "Wait! Natsuko – er, I mean, Aurora!" The Sidhe paused, and looked over her shoulder at Shinji. "A – all that stuff you said to me earlier – was it all a lie?"

Aurora smiled. "No Shinji, it was all true. Ask Mister Dresden; a Sidhe cannot speak any word that is untrue." Content with having gotten the last word in, the Faerie sealed the portal behind her.

And then Shinji was looking at me with wide, desperate eyes. The question he wanted to ask was obvious, even if he couldn't bring himself to voice it. I knew what he wanted to hear – and I knew what I had to tell him.

I could have explained all the details of the Sidhe's murky relationship with the truth to Shinji, but that wouldn't have done the kid any favors. If I tried explaining all the tricky detail to Shinji in his current state, he wouldn't understand half of it, and it would just leave him confused, uncertain, and frightened; that would make him easy prey for Aurora, and I couldn't keep an eye on him every minute of the day. Right now, he needed a simple, clear answer. "Aurora is a Sidhe; they are masters of deception and manipulation. I'm sorry, Shinji."

"She lied to me." Stars and stones, I could practically hear the kid's heart breaking. "She was the first person to ever tell me that she liked me, that she cared about me, and – and she lied to me!" Shinji dropped down to his knees and wrapped his arms in a desperate hug around Mouse. From the way Shinji buried his face in Mouse's thick fur while his entire body shook, I'm pretty sure he was crying.

Misato and I traded a look, and both realized that we had no idea how to handle this situation. I mean, what do you say to a kid who's been horribly neglected for most of his life, and then first time someone actually tells him they care about him it's all a ploy to manipulate him? Well, we had to try something. "Um – look, Shinji. I know we haven't really told you, but – well, Misato and I do care about you, and not just because you're a pilot. So … yeah."

Yeah, real smooth Harry; that'll definitely comfort the kid. Misato tried to give the kid a pat on the shoulder that might have turned into a hug, but Shinji shied away and just tightened his grip on Mouse. For his part, Mouse remained a stoic pillar of comfort for Shinji. The dog let his massive head rest of Shinji's shoulder, and let out a few sympathetic whines. At least this time I wasn't the only person in the group with worse people skills than the dog.

Eventually, the kid managed to mostly cry himself out, and slowly let go of the dog. Once the boy pulled back a bit, Mouse put a few slobbery doggy kisses over his face, which seemed to cheer Shinji up a little bit, and also made it far more difficult to tell that he had been crying.

After wiping the moisture off his face with one of his shirtsleeves, Shinji looked up and me and Misato. The kid still looked like someone had torn open his chest and ripped out his heart, but now he was trying to hide it and put on a brave face, but he still had one hand buried in the fur of Mouse's neck. "Sorry about –" The kid spent a few seconds trying to find the right words before eventually settling on. "Sorry about everything."

"It's alright, Shinji." At least Misato could do a better job of sounding gentle and nurturing than I can; maybe it's just one of those things women are better at than men. Then again, the fact that I'd never had anything close to a normal family probably didn't help either.

"Um – how much of what Aurora and I talked about did you guys hear?" Oh hell, you could just tell the kid was expecting us to lash out at him any second now.

There was no point in lying to the kid. "Most of it."

"Oh. Sorry." Shinji let out a resigned sigh. "Guess that's going to get me into even more trouble than I'm already in for running away, right?"

My mouth was open and I was just about to start talking when Misato gave me one of those 'don't get involved in this' looks and the words died in my throat. A second later, she spoke up. "Harry, could you give Shinji and I a moment to talk?"

For a second I was tempted to argue, but Misato was Shinji's legal guardian. Yeah, I cared about the kid's wellbeing, and Misato had even asked me try and be involved in the kid's life, but she was the one who had to take responsibility for him. So I gave them enough space to let them have their conversation in private, but not so far away that I couldn't hear them when I Listened.

Listening isn't some supernatural trick, but it's something most people have forgotten how to do. It's all about knowing how to pay attention to your senses and pick up on all those little details we normally filter out and don't pay attention to. Between Listening and watching the two of them out of the corner of my eye, I could more or less follow the conversation.

"Shinji, I'm –" Misato paused, sighed, and started over. "Look, Shinji, do you want to quit being an Eva pilot?"

"What I want doesn't really matter, does it?" Shinji's tone was one part bitterness, and two parts resignation. "I'm an Eva pilot now; that's just how it is. That's why my father called me here, that's why you and Mister Dresden came after me. That's what everyone wants me to do. And – well, someone has to pilot it, and right now the only other pilot you have is Ayanami and she's still hurt, so I'm the only one who can do it. Like my father said, he called me here because there was nobody else." Shinji sighed. "So, that's what I have to do, isn't it?

"I didn't ask you what you had to do, or what other people want you to do, Shinji, I asked you about what you want to do."

"We both know that what I want doesn't matter." Now the bitterness was at the fore. "Even though everyone knows I'm not cut out for this, as long nobody else can pilot the Eva I have to do it foreveryone else so –"

"This isn't about anyone but you!" Right, so much for Misato being better at the whole gentle nurturing thing, now she was pissed. "This is your choice! You have to take responsibility and decide for yourself whether or not you want to be a pilot! If you don't then –"

Before Misato could get any further, Mouse bumped his shoulder into Misato's legs hard enough to get her attention, and fixed the Lt. Colonel with a reproachful look and let out a sad little doggy noise. Like I said, the dog is better with people than any of the actual people are.

Misato took a few deep breaths, and when she resumed speaking she had gotten back to being the nice Misato. "Look, Shinji, if you don't want to pilot it then you don't have to. You can go back to where you were before Tokyo-3 and just forget all about Eva. I guess that would probably be better for you anyway. You're right, you're not ready to be an Eva pilot. It's not because of anything you did wrong or because you're weak, it's just that we didn't have enough time to train you. No – that's not entirely true; it's also because I screwed up when it came to your training. I pushed you too hard, expected too much of you too quickly. UN army basic training takes more than two months for an adult; you're just a kid, and I expected you to become a soldier in two weeks. It wasn't fair for me to expect that out of you." Misato sighed. "Yeah. It's best if you just forget about Eva, and try to live a normal life."

Misato turned her back on Shinji, and started walking in my direction. For a moment it seemed like Shinji was about to say something, but then he hesitated and remained silent. Mouse took action once again, this time bumping Shinji, then tossing a significant glance at Misato's back and letting out a soft whine.

Encouraged by the dog, Shinji found enough resolve to speak up. "Wait, Misato!"

Misato paused, and then turned around. "Yes?"

"Um – I wanted to ask you." Shinji hesitated, and got enough encouraging nudge from Mouse. "Well, when I first moved here, why did you want me to stay with you? Was it just so it would be easier to keep an eye on me, or did you think I couldn't take care of myself or…" The kid trailed off weakly.

"I – well – " Misato paused, and took a few seconds to work out an answer. "I never really told you about how I got Pen-Pen, did I?"

"Uh … no?" Shinji looked pretty confused by Misato's attempt to change the subject.

"I thought so. Well, you see, I got Pen-Pen from this illegal lab in the one of the New Zealand R-Zones. They'd been doing a bunch of genetic experiments on animals, and after we went in to clean it out, the government wanted to put all the modified animals to sleep. I – well this was actually one of the last missions my company went on before I officially joined Nerv, so I managed to pull rank and got to take in Pen-Pen as a going-away present."

Misato smiled and chuckled. "You've probably noticed by now, but Pen-Pen's really a pretty useless, ungrateful, greedy bird; even a cat would at least chase mice or something. It's not that I took him in because I felt sorry for him or anything; well, maybe I did, but that wasn't the real reason. The real reason was that I just didn't want to be alone any more. I wanted to have someone who would be there, waiting for me whenever I came home at night. I –" Misato ran a hand through her hair and let out a nervous laugh. "Well, you've probably noticed by now that I don't exactly do a good job of taking care of myself. I don't really have things put together well enough to just ask someone to live with me because it's my job, or out of sympathy."

"Oh." Shinji's expression was still neutral.

"Y'know Shinji – well – this is probably going to sound stupid, but even if you don't want to pilot the Eva, I could ask and see if they'd let you stay here. Y'know, at my place. If you want to."

"Oh." The word was non-indicative, but a very small, guarded, and hesitant, but genuine smile appeared on Shinji's face. I don't think the boy actually meant to say it out loud, but he very softly whispered to himself. "I'm home."

Misato obviously heard the words, and smiled back at him. "Welcome home."

Mouse left the two humans behind, and trotted over to my side. I reached down to scratch the dogs ears, and he looked back at Shinji and Misato, then let out a whuff of breath.

"Oh, I think they probably would've figured it out on their own eventually."

Mouse sneezed.

"Well, don't get me wrong, you did help them out a lot. Good dog."

Mouse let out another whuff of breath, and his little stub of a tail began happily twitching back and forth.

* * *

Emotionally tormenting Shinji makes me feel guilty, but at least I didn't completely break him. Yet.

Also of note, a new chapter of the Eva manga is out, which is interesting because it finally lets us know what comes after "Ritsuko Akagi, the truth is…"


	13. Shinji II

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

I saw Father smile once, three years ago.

Until I'd moved to Tokyo-3, the only times I ever saw him was when we both visited Mom's grave on the anniversary of her death. Even then, we would maybe spend a minute or two standing at the grave, he would maybe pretend to actually care enough about me to ask me the same two questions every single year, and that was it, so long, see you next year Shinji. Most years, he would spend more time talking to my sensei than he did talking to me.

I was living with Takamachi-sensei at the time. I've had a lot of senseis, so many that I don't even remember most of them. It's not that they did a bad job or anything; it's just that I never really lived with any of them for very long, so none of them really left an impression. I'd been living with Takamachi-sensei long enough to start getting used to it. It probably helped that he and his wife already had three kids, so adding one more person to the household wasn't that awkward; their younger daughter was about a year younger than me, so I didn't disrupt things too badly.

Takamachi-sensei drove me to Mom's grave that day, but there was some kind of traffic problem and we wound up getting there a few minutes late. That was when I saw it. Father was standing over Mom's grave, and he had a kind of sad smile on his face. I guess he must have been thinking about Mom, remembering the good times they'd had together or something. It made me hopeful; if he was in a good mood, maybe I would finally get a chance to really talk to him today.

Father looked up when he heard our car approaching, and his smile disappeared. So much for that.

Takamachi-sensei got out of his car, only to lean back against the side of the vehicle and gave me a casual wave goodbye. "I don't want to but in on your family reunion. I'll be here when you're done."

The walk from the car to Mom's grave always seemed to take forever, even though it was really only about thirty meters. "Hello Father."

"Shinji."

The two of just stood there silently, with Father just looking at me while I struggled to find something, anything I could say to him. I only saw my Father for a minute or two every year; I had no idea how I was supposed to talk to him.

"How are things with the Takamachis?" Great. Now it was time for the first of his two questions, asking me about my current guardian.

"They're fine." I used to give him detailed answers, before I'd figured out a long time ago that he didn't actually care what my answer was.

Silence returned, until it was time second question. "And school?"

"It's fine." Desperate to keep the conversation from ending, I added. "There was a history test last week. I got a perfect score."

"I see." That was it. No 'well done, son,' or any other indication that he had actually heard what I said. He wad probably annoyed that he had to spend any time at all around me, and now here I was trying to drag this encounter out longer.

I tried one last gambit to keep the conversation going. "I – I liked the book you gave me for my birthday." My birthday had been four months ago, back in June, and the book had actually been pretty boring compared to those movies that old friend of Moms had sent this year, but it was the only thing I could think of.

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say, since it didn't even rate an 'I see' or some other form of acknowledgement from Father. He probably didn't even remember buying it for me, or maybe he didn't even really buy me anything, and it was just someone taking pity on me and saying it was from Father.

The two of us walked back to the car in silence, until Father spoke to my guardian. "Mister Takamachi, there are things we should discuss."

"Oh, sure thing Mister Ikari." Takamachi-sensei opened the car's passenger door for me. "Wait inside this shouldn't take too long, Shinji." Once I was inside the car, Takamachi-sensei returned his attention to Father.

"How is Shinji's training progressing?" He could have asked me that, but I guess that would have meant having to spend more time around me.

Takamachi-sensei shot an uncomfortable glance in my direction, probably because I was doing awful and he wasn't comfortable telling Father that where I could hear him. "Do you think maybe we should move a bit?"

"Why? I have little time to spare for such trivial things." Yeah, that's what I was to Father, a trivial thing. It's not like Father actually cared if I overheard him and Takamachi-sensei talking about how I was a completely insufficient son; he made that perfectly clear every chance he had.

Takamachi-sensei paused, and shot several more glances in my direction. "If you insist." Takamachi-sensei crossed his arms over his chest. "Shinji is a good student, but I think it would help if he had a stable family environment instead of being shuffled around to different homes every few months. Also, to be quite honest, I think it would be best if he dropped out of learning martial arts; it's not that he's a bad student, but I think he would have more fun if you let him find his own hobbies. He's quite good with the cello, and not a bad cook either."

"He has no need for such frivolous skills."

"Even if those are things that make him happy?"

"His happiness is not what is important here, what matters is –"

I never heard what father said next; by then he'd already said plenty. As far Father was concerned, I was a trivial thing, and my happiness was completely unimportant. I tore open the car door and ran as fast as I could. I didn't care where I was going, I just wanted somewhere, anywhere other than right there, listening to my Father's cold words. Eventually, Takamachi-sensei found me hiding behind a tree on the edge of the graveyard. He took me home, and that night we packed my things up and I got sent on the next sensei; I guess he didn't want anything to do with me after seeing me run away.

So, that's what happened on the only day I ever saw my father smile.

Now he was smiling again.

Misato and Dr. Akagi were running another synchronization and harmonics test to make sure all the repairs to Unit 01 after the fight with the Fourth Angel hadn't caused any unexpected problems. Since all they really needed me there for was to be the pilot and occasionally do one or two little things like move the Eva's arm or press a switch.

Ayanami was there in the cages too, looking over Unit 00. I'd heard about how she got hurt when her Eva malfunctioned, and Harry had saved her. Now they were planning to try restarting her Eva tomorrow, and she was looking it over one last time. I guess I'm kinda curious about her. I mean, it's not like it's strange for me to be; she's the other Eva pilot, but I don't really know anything about her. So, I was watching her; it's not like there was anything else to do while Dr. Akagi ran her tests.

That's when Father showed up, walking right up to Ayanami and talking to her, as if it were a perfectly normal thing for him to do. I couldn't tell what he or Ayanami were saying to each other; they were too far away and there was too much background noise for my Eva's sound system to pick up on them, and I couldn't read lips or anything like that. Father was just standing there on the bridge, talking to Ayanami, while she was still on top of her Eva, dividing her attention between looking over her Eva's entry plug and talking to Father.

And then Father looked at Ayanami for a moment, and smiled. He said something. I don't know what it was, but I saw Ayanami pause for a second, before going to back to working on her Eva. Then Father did something almost an expected as smiling, and chuckled. I was still trying to understand what could possibly be going on when Father turned around and left.

Why does Father smile and laugh with Ayanami? In the past, I could always tell myself that the reason he never did those things with me was because he just wasn't the kind of person who did that with anyone. That made it alright, didn't it? It's not that he was trying to specifically be cold to me, he was just one of those people who always seem cold and standoffish, but deep down they do actually care about other people. It wasn't my fault my Father never smiled at me.

But now I couldn't lie to myself about that any more. Father did smile and laugh, just not with me. What did I do wrong, to make my own Father hate me so much? It must have been something wrong with me; I mean, it's not like Father was the only person who hated me; really, Misato and Harry were the only exceptions to the rule. Even Aurora had only been nice to me because she thought it would let get something from me; I'm actually still not sure what exactly she wanted, but Harry figured it probably had something to do with the fact that I piloted the Eva. Of course; the fact that I piloted the Eva was the only reason anyone aside from Misato and Harry would ever notice me.

And not even being a pilot was enough to get Father to notice me.

* * *

The early morning was always a nice, peaceful time at the apartment, especially on the weekends when I didn't have to hurry and rush through everything in order to get to school on time. Ayanami's synch test was today, but not until the afternoon, so I had some time off before I needed to worry about that.

I woke up early enough to take a quick shower before I had to start breakfast. Technically it was Misato's turn to make breakfast, but I've found it's better for everyone if I just forget about that and make my own breakfast instead. Misato's nice, but sometimes her idea of what constitutes an edible meal is weird. Breakfast was always the worst; Misato liked to eat Western-style cereals, probably because they didn't require any actual effort to make. I preferred to have a proper Japanese breakfast when there was time for it, though between my work with the Evas and school I often had to settle for something quick like toast.

I had time this morning though, especially since there were enough leftovers from last night to speed things up a bit. All I had to do was heat up a bowl of miso, some rice, a bit of seaweed, and the fish, and my breakfast was ready to go; the only thing I actually had to make fresh this morning was the tea. While I waited for everything to get warm, I opened up a can of fish in Pen-Pen's bowl, and then the two of us ate our breakfast in silence.

As it often did, the smell of breakfast woke up Misato up. Misato had never been much of a morning person, but ever since the thing with Aurora she had been getting even slobbier than usual. She hadn't even bothered to get dressed before coming out of her room, and was still in her sleeping clothes that really weren't very appropriate for wearing around the house. "Good morning, Misato."

Misato yawned, and grumbled something that was probably supposed to be a response to what I had said. As seemed to be her morning ritual, she stumbled over the refrigerator, pulled out one of her beers, and drained it completely dry. Once she was done with her beer, Misato went through the rest of her ritual, loudly proclaiming. "Now this is the only way to start the day!"

"Wouldn't tea be healthier?"

"Probably, but beer tastes better." Misato pulled open one of the cabinets and found a bowl for herself, then grabbed the box of her favorite sugar-filled chocolate-coated cereal from the top of the fridge. Once, she'd poured out enough of the cereal to satisfy herself, she put up the cereal and opened up the fridge to pull out another beer, emptying most of it into her cereal bowl. She looked at the mostly empty beer can, sloshed its contents around experimentally, and then thrust the can out towards me. "There's only a little left, you want to finish it off?"

I blushed at the suggestion; I was getting more comfortable about living with Misato, but I still wish she didn't have to tease me so much. "You know I can't, I'm still a kid."

"You're so serious; you need to learn to relax a little." Misato poured the rest of the beer into Pen-Pen's food dish, which the penguin seemed perfectly alright with. "It's not like you'd get in trouble for it anything; nobody except the two of us would know, and I'm not planning to telling anyone. After all, I'd be the one who would get in trouble than you if anyone found out."

"Even if I don't get in trouble, I still shouldn't." I needed to find a way to change the topic, fast. If I didn't, Misato would just keep teasing me. "Hey can I ask you something Misato?"

Misato had to take a second to swallow a mouthful of her chocolate and beer cereal before she answered my question. "Sure, go ahead."

"Um – well you said the other day that Ayanami and the other pilot, the Second Child, had been in training for years before they ever got into an Eva. So, I guess I was wondering what kind of training they've been getting." I sighed and slumped down onto the table; now that Ayanami had healed, she was probably going to be a far better pilot than I could ever manage, and as long as I was the worst pilot of the lot I would never have a chance to gain Father's respect.

Misato swallowed another mouthful of her horrifying cereal before she answered my question. "Oh, we spent a lot of time training them combat skills, tactics, that kind of thing. It turned out to mostly a waste; at the time we thought training them normal combat skills might carry over to piloting the Evas, but it didn't really work out. Evas have a completely different balance from people, so martial arts training didn't really work out for us, and even if it did most hand-to-hand combat techniques are designed for beating up things with human anatomy."

A sudden thought struck me. "Father did try to get some of my senseis to teach me martial arts. Do you think maybe…"

"Probably." Misato shrugged, and had some more of her cereal before continuing. "Since you were a backup pilot, it would make sense to try and train you a bit. How far along did you get, anyway?"

"I was never very good at it." I sighed and shifted my eyes away from Misato. "It's not like I wasn't trying to learn or anything, it's just that I never quite – well, I didn't like the idea of learning how to hurt people, so I don't think I ever put as much effort I should have into the training."

"Oh. Well, maybe you should think about taking it up again."

I hadn't been expecting that. "But, I thought you just said that –"

"Yeah, it won't help with your Eva piloting, but it would be useful to know. It would probably be a good idea to throw in some weapons training too. I mean, after what happened with Aurora, it would be a good idea if you knew a bit about how to defend yourself."

"Hey, I know Aurora was trying to take advantage of me, but she wasn't trying to –"

Misato held up a hand and cut off my objection. "I know Shinji. It's not her I was thinking about though; there are plenty of bad guys out there who might want to cause you trouble. Unscrupulous types who think they could use you to get rich and powerful, random crazy people, criminals who would want to hold you ransom, stuff like that."

I admit, I'd never really thought about the kind of trouble being a pilot could bring down on me, but now that I did it was a little terrifying to think about. What if next time someone sister got hurt during a fight with an Angel, it was some big guy with a gun instead of just another kid my age? I guess I wasn't doing a very good job at trying to hide my fear, because Misato spoke up. "Don't worry, I'm sure your security detail will keep those types from actually causing you any trouble, I just think it wouldn't hurt if you knew a bit about protecting yourself too, that's all." Misato smiled. "If nothing else, you can use it to teach that bully who cause you some trouble the other day a lesson."

"Uh, I don't think he's going to be a problem anymore. We're – we're actually kind of friends now."

"Oh really? How'd that happen?"

"Well, the other day he just came up to me and apologized for hitting me." I shrugged and took a sip of my tea. "I didn't really hold it against him; I mean, I didn't like getting punched, but I could kind of understand why he was so mad."

"Well, I guess that's good, but I still don't like it. I hope you at least punched him back; it's just not gonna be right, he owes you one, so you have to punch him.

She thinks the same way as Toji. Somehow, that doesn't shock me. "Well, actually I did kind of punch him a bit." I nervously shifted around in my chair. "It's not like I wanted to hit him or anything. Well, maybe I did a little, but I still wouldn't have. But he kept saying I had to punch him, and eventually Kensuke told me I should just go ahead and do it because there was no way Toji was going to let the whole thing to until I did, so I punched him. Um – I'm not in trouble or anything, am I?"

Misato smiled, and leaned back in her chair. "Of course not, he asked you punch him, after all. You were practically doing the guy a favor." My guardian leaned forward, an entirely too eager grin on her face. "So did you smack him good? Make him cry like a little girl?"

"Um, actually…" I could feel my face heating up a bit. "Well, the day that happened was the day I had to stop by the Laundromat after school. So, well, I had a roll of coins in my pocket, you know, to pay for the machines, and I'd had my hands in my pockets when he showed up, and I kinda – well it's not like I meant to, but when I punched him…" I winced at the memory, and rushed through the rest of it. "And, when I realized that I had all the coins in my hand I tried to stop the punch, but I messed up and hit him in the nose instead and – uh – well I broke his nose."

Misato was just staring at me. She must be so mad she couldn't decide where to start. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to do it! Am I in trouble?"

And then Misato let out a single bark of laughter. "You're kidding, right? I'm actually kind of impressed; a bully messes with you, and you break his nose! I didn't know you had it in you! I mean, I would've expected something like that from Asuka, but you? Timid little Shinji? Guess I had you figured wrong, you must be one of those who's real nice and quiet most of the time, but when someone messes with you bad enough, you tear them apart."

Right. I wasn't really comfortable with the fact that Misato seemed proud of me for hurting another kid. I mean, he didn't deserve to have his nose broken just for being mad about what happened to his sister. So, it was time to try and change the subject, before Misato decided she should go around telling everyone at Nerv about this. "Asuka? She's the Second Child, right?"

Misato nodded. "Yeah, Asuka Soryu Langley."

"What's she like?"

"Asuka's…" Misato paused for a moment, and then ate some more of her cereal before she actually answered my question. "Basically, imagine someone who's the complete opposite of you; loud, assertive, and completely certain she's the best there is at everything. She's been training to be a pilot for a long time; almost ten years now, although for the first five years or so we tried not to push her too hard. She's smart too; she already has a degree from the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr."

"The what?" I wasn't even sure what language that was.

"Oh, it's a German military academy; one the best ones there is actually, we had to jump through a lot of hoops to get them to admit a minor. Did I mention she's German? Well, technically she's a quarter German, a quarter Japanese, and half American, but she's lived in Germany for most of her life so…"

"Oh." Ten years of training, and a degree from a military academy; sounds like she was going to be a much better pilot than me. "Is she ever going to come here to Tokyo-3, or is she going to have to stay in Germany?"

"Well, I don't know if I'm supposed to tell you this or not, but she and her Eva are actually already on the way here. It takes a while to get a carrier group all the way from Germany to Japan, so it'll be a couple weeks before she actually gets here." Misato smirked at me, and I realized I might be in trouble. "Why so interested in her, Shinji? I guess it won't hurt to tell you that she is pretty cute, I've probably got one or two pictures somewhere in all my stuff, though they'd be a bit out of date by now. I can tell you she's a redhead, so that's good if you're one of those who guys who like foreign women with exotic hair colors." Misato leaned in close and her grin got almost terrifying. "Or is it something else? Do you like the idea of a strong foreign girl who'll boss you around and tell you what to do? Tell you how she likes it?"

I could tell I was blushing like mad as I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat. "I really wish you wouldn't tease me like this…" It's hard enough to not think about that kind of stuff when she isn't making a big deal out of it.

"Fine, fine." Misato sighed and waved her free hand dismissively. "You're way too easy to tease, Shinji. Guess that's one thing you do have in common with Asuka; it never took me very long to get under her skin either. Now Rei would probably be an interesting challenge, but I don't know if I'll ever get a chance. I mean, she pretty much never talks to anyone but Harry." Misato frowned. "As much of a smartass as he is, he's probably got first rights on teasing her anyway."

I wasn't quite sure what I could say about all that, so I opted for the safe route of not saying anything. A few seconds later, Misato perked up. "Say, speaking of Rei, I just remembered…" Misato went to her room, and came back with a pair of ID cards. "Ritsuko gave these to me yesterday; your official ID, and Rei's renewal." Misato scowled. "I tried to get her to come over for dinner, but she wouldn't; apparently she doesn't like my cooking. I can't imagine why; you like my cooking, don't you Shinji?"

I might not know much about girls, but I'm not a complete idiot. "Yeah, your cooking is great Misato." I took Ayanami's card from Misato, I couldn't help but stare at the picture for a moment. I'd been doing that more than I should lately; I mean, it's hard not to be curious about her. After all, she's the other pilot, and I don't really know anything about her, except that Father smiles at her. I knew more about the Second Child, Asuka Soryu Langley, than I did about Rei, and I'd never even met Soryu.

"Well, what's so interesting, Shinji?" Oh no, I'd given Misato something new to tease me with.

"What? N-nothing!"

"Why are you getting so flustered?" There came that smile again; the smile she always gets when she's teasing me. "Don't tell me you're…" Misato snickered at me. "My my, you're turning into the quite the little ladies man, aren't you Shinji? First Asuka, now Rei, how many girls are we going to have to recruit to satisfy you? I know the American Branch's test pilot is a girl; if the Americans ever finish building their Evas maybe you'll get a chance to add her to your harem…"

"It's not like that! I was just curious about Ayanami, that's all; even though we're both pilots, I don't really know much about her…"

"Well, now you have a perfect excuse to go over to her place and get to know her better, don't you? Want me to help you pick out some nice flowers to give her? I can chase off your security people for a bit, give you two some alone time, maybe even make a few arrangements to set the mood –"

"Stop teasing me!" I didn't mean to sound that whiny, but she was really starting to get to me.

"You're too easy." Misato was laughing at me again. Misato finished off the rest of her soggy chocolate beer cereal in the space of less than a minute, and then let out an extremely loud belch.

If she hadn't been teasing me all morning, I probably never would have said anything. But she had been, and now I had a chance to hit back. "Classy. It's amazing you're still single at your age."

"Well I'm sorry my uncouth behavior bothers you so much." In hindsight, I should have recognized that Misato's smile was just a bit too forced, and the fact that her eyebrow twitching so much was a danger sign, but this was the first time I'd ever tried something like this.

"Don't forget the fact that you're a slob." Sometimes I don't know when to quit.

Misato's smile looked so friendly it was terrifying. "Say, Shinji, I think we've got time for me to give you a hand-to-hand combat lesson before I need to go to HQ."

I felt a very strong urge to run away.

* * *

I was still sore when I got to Ayanami's apartment building. Misato wasn't mean about it or anything, but it would've been nice if she were a bit gentler. I'm not sure if it did any good though. I mean, I can barely fight when I'm in a giant military cyborg with a whole bunch of advanced equipment helping me, so I don't think I'm ever going to be much good when I have to use my normal wimpy body.

I was surprised by Ayanami's apartment building. It was a dump. If I'd had to guess, I would've expected Ayanami to live in a place that was … well, I'm not really sure, but not a place like this. The building itself was run down, there was a lot of random litter all over the place, and it was close enough to a construction zone that the clanking of heavy equipment was a constant background noise. The apartment where Misato and I lived was pretty nice, so I had kind of expected that Ayanami would live somewhere nice too.

I tried the doorbell; it was broken. I tried knocking; no answer. I couldn't just put the card into Ayanami's mail slot, because it was already stuffed so full of junk mail that she wouldn't notice it. I sighed, and tried knocking one last time. Still no answer, but as I dropped my hand down from knocking on the door it brushed against the door's handle, and I realized it was unlocked.

No, this was a bad idea. I should just go; I could wait outside the entrance to Nerv HQ for Ayanami. I could call Misato or someone else who would know another way to get in touch with Ayanami; surely Nerv would've given her a cell phone like they gave me? Yeah, it would be better if I just left.

But her door was unlocked. That meant she was here, right? Maybe she listened to music or something when nobody else was around, and just hadn't heard me knocking. Plus, if I wound up missing her, and she tried to go to Nerv with her old outdated card it would cause problems, and then Misato would be disappointed with me for not getting Ayanami's new card to her. And if she wasn't there, I could just leave the card on a table or something with a note, and it's not like I'd be intruding or anything. I mean, she needed the card, after all. And … well maybe I was a little curious about her too.

I tentatively opened the unlocked door, just cracking it open enough to look through. "Um – hello? Ayanami? Are you home? I – um – it's me, Shinji Ikari." Did she even know my name? "The Third Child." I added, in case she didn't. We'd never been properly introduced after all, and we'd had exactly one conversation, and it wasn't much of one; the only reason I even knew her name was because I'd asked Misato for it. "Are you here Ayanami?" Still no answer, I guess she wasn't here, but it couldn't hurt to make one last check. "Um, I'm coming in." When no answer came, I opened the door, and stepped in.

Ayanami's apartment was dirty. Not like Misato's messiness, where things just got tossed all over the place randomly, but actually dirty, as in there was dirt all over the place. The carpet along her apartment's entryway was covered in dirty brown footprints (did she just keep wearing her shoes whenever she came inside?) and there was a thin layer of grime covering the walls; I ran a finger over one of the walls experimentally, and it came back grey. After a moment of hesitation, I decided it was better to get my own socks dirty than add to the mess, and took off my shoes.

There was plenty of other stuff, dirty dishes in the sink, a full garbage bag that hadn't been taken out yet, clothes just tossed about randomly, and a bed that looked like it hadn't had its sheets washed for months, though oddly the pillow and pillowcase looked new. However, out of all the mess two things immediately caught my attention. The first was a box full of used bandages; after I'd tried running away Harry had explained how things like hair and blood could be used for magic, so leaving bloody bandages in an unlocked apartment could get Ayanami hurt. I walked over to the box to check, and felt a bit of relief when I saw no actual blood, and several obvious burn marks on the bandages. I guess she'd burned up the bloody parts. It was stupid of me to worry; Misato had told me Harry seemed to be close with Ayanami, so of course she would follow his rules about not leaving blood lying around.

That left the other strange thing; the one clean part of the apartment. It looked like an ordinary set of drawers, but there wasn't a speck of dust on it, and there were a couple of odd things on top of it. I hadn't expected to see a vase full of blue flowers; Ayanami never struck me as one of those girls who likes – well – girly stuff like flowers. That wasn't as stranger as the cardboard crown from one of those American fast food restaurants though. Ayanami collects some weird stuff. Well, the books weren't so strange, they were same books I'd seen her reading during lunchtime at school, after all.

That's when I noticed something else, on top of one of the books. It looked like a necklace, which was odd; I'd never seen Ayanami wear any kind of jewelry before. I picked it up, and recognized it instantly. It looked almost exactly like Harry's pentacle necklace, except it was a bit smaller and looked brand new instead of old and battered.

Then I heard the bathroom door open. I turned around.

Ayanami was there. And aside from the towel, she was naked.

Oh no.

She was going to kill me. And if she didn't, Harry was going to kill me. And if he didn't, Misato was going to kill me. If Father ever found out, I would never have any chance of winning his respect. And he would kill me.

She looked almost surprised to see me for a second, before her expression went back to normal.

"I – Sorry – um – I didn't – I didn't mean – I – Sorry – I – " She started walking towards me. Why was she walking towards me? Why wasn't she yelling at me and calling me a pervert and hitting me? Why wasn't she even trying to cover herself up? The towel didn't cover much, and as she walked stuff moved, and I saw … things. Things I shouldn't be seeing.

Wait a minute, why was I looking? I'd broken into her house, and now she was naked and I was just standing there, looking at her! What kind of sick pervert does that kind of thing?

"I'm sorry! I didn't see anything!" That was a lie; I'd seen everything. "I'm sorry!" I slammed my eyes shut, and then covered them up with my hands, just to be safe. I felt something hard in my right hand, and realized I was still holding onto that pentacle necklace I'd found. I dropped the pendant.

"Um – !" I tried to get out of the room before I could do anything worse, but I still had my eyes closed I just bumped into Ayanami. My eyes opened up automatically, and I tried to back away from here, but somehow my leg had wound up behind hers, and when I tried to back up I wound up tripping, falling flat on my back, and bringing Ayanami down with me.

Next thing I knew, I was flat on my back on the floor, and there was something damp and wet and warm on top of me. When I opened my eyes, Ayanami's face was maybe a couple inches away from my own, and she was just … looking at me. My head was kind of sore from hitting the floor, and my right arm was kind of pinned down against the floor, while the hand was fall of something that was warm and soft except for this one little part in the middle and oh I really hope that's not what I think it is.

I checked. It was exactly what I had been afraid it was.

Just to make things even worse, I could tell that my body was reacting to her being there, and since she was literally right on top of me there was no way she wouldn't notice it too.

Well, if she wasn't planning to kill me before, I was definitely dead now.

I desperately tried to think of something, anything I could say to fix this and somehow explain that this was all an accident and I hadn't even known she was there and I didn't to do any of it and oh please don't kill me. Ayanami just stared down at me for a second, and then just casually picked herself up from on top of me and walked off, as if nothing had happened.

By the time I'd worked up enough courage to stand up, Ayanami already had her underwear on. I hastily averted my eyes, even though that was kind of pointless after I'd seen her naked and molested her. "Why are you here?" Ayanami asked the question as if I'd just knocked on the door and she'd answered it, as if the last minute or so hadn't happened. Maybe it hadn't. Maybe this was all just another one of _those_ dreams, and I would wake up soon and everything would be normal.

"I – um – that is – I," It took me a while to actually remember why I'd come here in the first place. "It was – was – oh, yeah, your card! Um you've got a new card, and Misato asked me to deliver it to you and – and I didn't mean to – it's just, the doorbell was broken and I knocked and tried to call out a couple times – but it's not like I'm saying it was – I mean, it's all my fault and I shouldn't have come in and I'm sorry and anyway here's your card!" I thrust my hand into one of my damp pockets, pulled out the card, and blindly thrust it in Ayanami's direction.

A couple seconds later, I felt Ayanami take the card from me. "Well, that's why I was here, just to give you the card, not to – sorry – it was all an accident, I swear. Sorry!" I fled the apartment.

With nowhere better to go, I went to the train station; it was a little early to head to Nerv, but where else would I go? Maybe once I was there they would give me something to do so I wouldn't have to keep thinking about what had just happened.

At least I didn't have to worry about finding a way to get to know Ayanami anymore; after this, it was a pretty sure thing that would hate me. In fact, they'd probably kick me out of the Eva program entirely; I'm pretty sure there's a rule against sexually assaulting another pilot. I could just imagine everyone, Misato, Harry, Dr. Akagi, Father, all of them, looking at me like I was garbage, before they kicked me out. Actually, I'd probably wind of going to prison; that's where people who did the kind of things I'd done to Ayanami belonged.

"Pilot Ikari."

I yelped and almost fell off the bench. Why was Ayanami here? Oh yeah, this is the closest train station to her apartment, so if she's going to Nerv of course she'd come here. I'm such an idiot. "Oh! Ayanami! Look, I'm uh – I'm really sorry about what happened. Really, really –"

"You have already expressed that sentiment." Wow, she sounded mad. Well, she actually sounded like she always does, but I'm pretty sure she was mad. That's when I noticed she was offering me a Nerv security card; when I looked at it, I saw it was mine.

"Oh! I must have given you mine by mistake!" I dug around in my pocket for a bit, and found Ayanami's card instead. "Sorry, here's yours." We exchanged cards silently. "Sorry about getting the cards mixed up and … everything."

The train showed up before I could dig myself any deeper, and the entire ride to Nerv was one of the most painfully awkward things I've ever had to endure. I really wanted to set things right with Ayanami, but I had no idea what I could say.

When we got to the long escalator down to the Geofront, I decided that even a bad, awkward attempt to settle things was better than nothing. I mean, it's not like I could possibly make her hate me any more than she already did. "Look, Ayanami, I know you probably hate me after what happened but I just want to say that –"

"No."

Oh no; I don't know how I can possibly fix things if she hates me so much she won't even give me a chance to try and explain. I guess I was just doomed. "Yeah, I guess there's not much I can say, is there? Look, for what it's worth, I'm sorry, and it's fine if you hate me, because I deserve it."

Ayanami turned around and looked at me. It was kinda – well, it feels wrong to say it, but the way she was looking at me was kinda creepy. Like all her attention was focused completely on me. "You do not understand. I do not hate you."

"You don't?" I sounded pathetically grateful for that.

"No."

"But – but what about, well, all the stuff I did."

"You came to my apartment to deliver my security card. Why would that make me hate you?"

"But – what about – well, you know…" I'm sure I was blushing horribly as I very quietly whispered "The touching and stuff."

"When you tripped? I lost my balance as well." Ayanami was quiet for a bit. It was weird; it was almost like she didn't understand that she should be upset by all the stuff that had happened. Then she did something even more unexpected. "I apologize for landing on top of you." She still sounded just as blankly neutral as she always did

"What? No! You don't have to apologize! That was completely my fault! All of it!"

Ayanami just stared at me for a few seconds, before she finally said. "I see." It was odd the way she said it; it reminded me of Father.

Thinking of Father reminded me when he'd talked to her the other day, and the fact that Ayanami's restart test was today. "Um, are you worried about today?"

"Why?"

"Well, your restart test on your Eva is today, right? So, well after you got hurt so bad last time, I was thinking that maybe you'd be scared of your Eva."

"Are you afraid of your Evangelion?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, I haven't gotten hurt like you did, but it's scary. I mean, if something goes wrong with the Eva while I'm fighting, I could die. How could I not be scared?"

"You are the Commander's son, correct?" I confirmed that I was. "Your father created the Evangelion. You do not have faith in his work?"

"How could I?" I don't know where the words came from. Well, that's not true, I know exactly where they came from, I just don't know where I found the courage to actually say them for once. "I mean, he's a terrible father! Knowing that he made the Evas actually makes me more worried about them, not less! He's made it pretty obvious he doesn't actually care about me or anything, so why should I have any faith in him or his work?"

Ayanami was quiet for a bit, until she finally said. "I see. You also think the Commander is a bad person."

That wasn't something I'd expected her to say. "You – you don't like Father?"

"No."

"But – but the other day I saw him smiling at –"

"No. The Commander smiles at Her."

"Um…" I wasn't sure what I could say to that; I didn't even really understand what she meant by that. Ayanami didn't say anything else, and before I could come up with something, we were at the Geofront. Lt. Ibuki was there waiting for us.

"Hello Shinji, Rei." Lt. Ibuki seemed happy to see us. "We'll be starting Rei's restart test in an hour and a half; Shinji, you'll be on standby, just in case." The Lieutenant frowned down at me. "What happened to you Shinji? Your clothes are wet."

"Ah! Nothing! Nothing happened!" I walked off towards the pilot lockers as fast as I could, leaving a confused Lt. Ibuki and enigmatic Rei Ayanami behind.


	14. Harry XII

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

The Leanansidhe had certainly seen better days. Her lithe limbs had become stick-thin, her elegant gown hung loosely from her wasted frame, and her once vibrant eyes were now flat and sunken back into her skull. She reminded me of the pictures we saw of the refugees in the aftermath of the Second Impact; a weak, hollow shell of what she had once been. It was hard to believe that the weak creature that stood before me now was the same being that had once haunted my nightmares and inspired a healthy amount of rational terror from me. I addressed the change to my Godmother with my usual tact.

"You look like crap, Lea."

Lea let out a weak chuckle. "I fear that 'tis so, dear child." Lea's voice hadn't changed as much as the rest of her, but there was still a hint of weakness, a raspiness that hadn't been there the last time I spoke with her. Maybe she wouldn't look so bad if I'd called her up in my old lab back home; my Nerv lab was nicely put together, but the plain white walls and general lack of homey touches had always made the Nerv lab seem a bit too sterile. In the technical aspects it was better than my old lab back home in Chicago or the lab I'd set up in my apartment, after all it was a purpose built wizard's lab instead of a converted room in an apartment, but I still felt more comfortable working in my old homey labs.

However, my Nerv lab had kickass magic circle, and that was a lot more important than a few homey touches when it came to dealing with Lea, or some of other nasty things I might have to summon one day. I'd been a bit tempted to go crazy with the fact that I actually had a budget now and make something really huge, like the circle the Nickleheads had used to imprison the Archive on Demonreach. Tokyo-3 was on top of a giant ley line nexus, which I guess figured since Lilith and her Black Moon had been here for billions of years and were supposed to be the source of pretty much all life on Earth. However, even if all the gold, gemstones, and other exotic materials wouldn't overstretch my budget, a super-elaborate circle would probably be more than I could actually handle. There's a lot of virtue in simplicity; the more complicated you make your circle, the more ways it can find to blow up catastrophically.

In the end, I'd settled on a circle set directly into the floor made of dozens of strands of various precious or magically significant metals. Each metal strand had hundreds of tiny runes carved into it, and each rune was filled in with an appropriate expertly cut gemstone. I'm not sure how the svartalves I'd hired to actually craft the thing managed to pull that off, I just know that the final pricetag was enough that it would have given me a heart attack back in the days before I had an expense account. Whenever I put any actual power into it, like I was now, the whole thing starting very softly glowing with a flowing, liquid, flickering rainbow of light. Heck, this thing might actually be good enough to keep Lea confined for a bit, especially in her current weakened state.

I have to admit, there was a nasty part of me liked seeing Lea looking so frail and helpless. I'd spent a pretty big portion of my life terrified of ever entering the Nevernever because of the risk I would run into her. Now that I was the one in a position of strength I was almost tempted to get a bit of payback. I'm not one of those pure-hearted heroes who would never think about going for revenge against someone who hurt me in the past.

I could say that in the end I decided not to try and get some serious payback against Lea because I didn't want to go down that path and give in to my darker impulses. However, I'm not sure how true that really is. Maybe my decision not to go for revenge was more about my very reasonable fear that even in her weakened state Lea could still take me in a straight up slugging match of raw power. Yeah, Lea was weaker than she'd been in the past, but in the past she could probably have crushed me with her pinkie finger in a straight fight (not that I would ever be stupid enough to actually fight someone as crazy strong as Lea fairly). Even a fraction of her old strength was still formidable, and that's not to mention that she might be playing up the weak act. Of course, she could also be bluffing, and actually be weaker than a kitten; it was always hard to tell with Faeries. That's part of what makes them dangerous.

Worse than that, she was smart; in all likelihood, smarter than me. I've been in plenty of tricky situation, and I'm no slouch in the brains department, but Lea had been doing this kind of thing back when the most advanced weapons in humanity's arsenal were pointy sticks and the mark 2 rock. Things that manage to survive for that long, especially among a group as ruthless and cutthroat as the Winter Court, are just about guaranteed to be very smart; stupid gets you killed fast in that world. Odds were, she had dozens of nasty tricks she could pull out and use against me if I pushed her hard enough.

Plus, not that I'd ever admit it to her, Lea was a useful resource. Sure, she was as treacherous and generally nasty as one would usually expect from a Winter Fae, and she wouldn't give me the time of day without trying to get something back from me in return, but she still knew things and had power, and for the right price she would share either of those with me. I've gotten a lot smarter about thinking twice before cutting any serious deals with Faeries, but there would still be times when what Lea had to offer me was important enough that I'd be willing to meet her price.

So, payback would have to wait. I looked her over once more, and tried to sound vaguely disinterested hen I said. "I guess fifteen years with no seasons changing hasn't been doing Winter any favors, has it?"

"You are mistaken little one." Lea tried to smile, but with her new gaunt look expression was actually pretty ghastly. "The seasons still turn, and the stone table till changes ownership every midwinter and midsummer. Winter is not so easily undone; even if the weather on this planet no longer grows cold, the idea of Winter, and all that it represents, endures."

"And yet, here you are rocking the famine victim look."

Lea let out a rasping, rattling sound that it took me a few seconds to realize had been a laugh. "Winter is far more than a mere weather pattern child, but I'll not deny that the weather does have its role, and the endless years of warmth have left our Court as less than it once was." Lea sighed, and flicked her hand as if she were casting off a minor annoyance. "La, such annoyances must be dealt with. The Summer Court survived the Ice Age, we can survive a warm decade or two; assuming the planet survives, the coming storm, the weather patterns will normalize eventually. Now, why have you summoned me, child?" It was strange, to see this odd and wasted creature acting with all the usual confidence and charm of my godmother, and displaying all her unique mannerisms and turns of phrase.

"I want to know why the Faerie Courts are nosing around Nerv and Project E."

Lea smiled; in her current state, the effect was rather chilling. "I have the knowledge you seek child, but to know the true motivations of the Faerie Courts is a treasure indeed; what can you offer me in exchange for this?"

"You're my godmother, wasn't offering me guidance part of your bargain with my mother?"

"Spiritual guidance, dear child, and I have overseen the development of your spiritual self, have I not?"

"Yeah, and you've done such a great job of it." I could feel all the old resentment suddenly come boiling out. Maybe summoning Lea had been a mistake; sure, she was probably the only source I knew who could and would give me the information I wanted, but we had a lot of history. "I mean, remember the way you took advantage of me when I was young, scared, and stupid, or the way you spent a decade and change chasing me around trying to turn me into one of your puppies, good times. And weren't you supposed to protect me too? Great job there; about the only thing you ever did was try to screw me over like everyone else."

"It would be unwise to imply that I have not fulfilled the bargain I made with your mother to the letter." Lea's voice sounded like it was a couple degrees shy of freezing the very air in my lungs. Bargains are serious business for the Sidhe, and you didn't accuse one of breaking a bargain without a very, very good reason. Oops. Just as I was about to start scrambling to salvage the conversation, Lea smiled again, and waved a hand dismissively. "La, no matter. I am sure you simply misspoke."

"You're in a whimsical mood today." I wanted to sound amused, but I was probably a lot closer to relieved.

"I prefer to think of my mood as fey." Lea couldn't stop herself from smirking as she delivered the line.

I groaned. "Lea, I'm the one who makes the bad puns around here, not you."

"I am your guest, and as a proper host it is your duty to indulge me." Lea was still wearing that damned self-satisfied smirk. "However, if you wish to negotiate for the sole right to engage in humor and witticism in any future conversations between us I am sure we could come to an arrangement. What are you prepared to offer me in exchange for the sole right to all forms of humor, from subtle cutting wit to unimaginative puns?"

Great, now she was being a smartass too. I hate it when people turn my own weapons against me. "No thanks; how about we get back to the reason I actually called you here? I need information, and it's in the interests of Winter to give it to me. I know enough about how the Courts work to know that whatever Summer's up to, Winter will want to stop it. I can do a better job of that if I know what's going on instead of having to stumble around in the dark."

"So, it would seem you are vulnerable to your own preferred weapon in any duel of words. How very interesting." Lea smiled at me long enough that I was starting to feel horribly nervous, before tossing the matter aside with a dismissive wave of her hand. "La, as amusing as this is, you are right, we have greater matters to discuss. Your argument is well reasoned child, but you will not gain the knowledge you seek without paying a price. However, I will take the circumstances into account…" Lea tapped a finger against her lips in thought for a few seconds, before her face lit up in a ghastly smile. "An exchange then. I will grant you the answer to your question if you will answer a question for me. 'Tis entirely fair; a question for a question, and an answer for an answer. Do we have a bargain?"

"Not on those terms; I get to decide whether or not I'll answer any specific question." That one was an obvious hazard; never agree to give a Faerie the answer to an unspecified question, or you'd get hit with something nasty like 'What is your Name?' that would give the Faerie everything it needs to seriously screw you over, either directly or by selling the information to someone else.

If Lea was annoyed by the fact that I didn't fall for the obvious trap, she gave no sign of it. "Reasonable, but I reserve the same right for myself. In addition, you must answer your questions first; the answers I am willing to provide you in exchange will depend a great deal on the value of the answers you provide me."

"No way. After I give you my answers, what's to stop you from deciding they're worthless, and not giving me anything in exchange?"

"That would be a violation of our bargain, dear child. And you must provide your measure first; considering your history, it would not be prudent for me to give you the answers you seek, only for you to end this conversation prematurely and force me to spend years chasing you to obtain my rightful due from you again."

I hate it when Lea actually has a pretty good point; I had tried to welch on our last bargain. Of course, that was because our last bargain involved Lea taking advantage of me when I was young, scared, stupid, and had no idea what I was getting myself into, but as far as she was concerned none of that changed the fact that we'd made a deal, and I hadn't held up my end of the bargain. "Alright, I'll answer one question, then you answer one, nice and simple. Deal?" Lea accepted my terms. "Alright then, hit me with your question."

"One of the Evangelion pilots is quite close to you, and the other has bonded with your friend and ally. In essence, you control two pilots, and through them, you effectively control two Evangelions. What do you intend to do with that power?"

"Beat the Angels, stop the Third Impact, save the world from unspeakable horrors, and probably get nothing more than a lousy T-shirt for it, you know how it goes." I gave an offhand shrug. "If I'm lucky, maybe I'll even get a girl in the bargain." Nerv certainly had plenty of attractive females on-staff; I might have taken advantage of that at some point if not for my general wariness of crapping where I ate. Well, if I'm completely honest, there's also the fact that I'm not that good with the ladies, especially not now that I also had to deal with the Japan-America culture gap as well.

Lea smiled down at me like I was that one kid in grade school who had always needed a little extra help from the teacher to figure out that two plus two is four. "A fine answer, but you've missed the true import of my question. Perhaps I should rephrase. What do you intend to do with your effective control over two Evangelions after the Angels are defeated?"

Oh. What would happen after the Angels hadn't really occurred to me before. When it comes to a big crisis like this, I tend to keep my mind focused on the present; what happens after the Angels doesn't really matter if the Angels kill us all, so I hadn't seen much point in worrying overmuch about it.

Now that I actually gave it some thought, I could see how the Evangelions could cause some serious trouble down the line. After all, the Angels could basically shrug off every single weapon in humanity's arsenal, even those fancy new N2 bombs that were supposed to be better than nukes. Since they had an AT field too, the Evangelions could probably do the same. The Evangelions had pretty much rendered a lot of military hardware obsolete, and it was a pretty safe bet that the various nations and the UN wouldn't just forget about them once the Angels were done with.

The US and EU were already building their own Evangelions after all, and even if they were supposed to go to Nerv, once the Angels were gone they'd go back to their home countries. How long did we have before an Evangelion arms race got started? Sure, the Vatican Treaty was supposed to keep that from happening, but then treaties don't exactly have a great track record of stopping nations from doing whatever they feel like when push comes to shove.

Then there were the implications for the supernatural world. Morgan and I had both thrown down with an Angel, and neither one of us managed to do all that much to them, even after we managed to get past the AT field. Morgan and I weren't exactly slouches in the combat magic department, heck, Morgan was probably only second to Luccio and the Senior Council when it came to combat magic. When one of the best fighters on the Council hadn't been able to do much more than knock an Angel back a bit with his best shot, that gave you a sense of just how nasty these things were.

The entire White Council might well gets its collective ass handed to it in a straight up fight against an Evangelion. The same was probably true for a lot of the other players out there; I haven't seen anything from the Vampire Courts or the Fomor that made me think they would be better off than the Council. So far, the only things in the supernatural world that might be able to stand up to the Evangelion were Nickleheads, since Hellfire could at least weaken AT fields.

Effectively controlling two Evangelions put me in a position to do pretty much whatever I damn well pleased. I mean, I've been trying to encourage Rei to think for herself and all that, but right now I'm pretty sure she'd do whatever I told her to do, even something like 'Rei, would you kindly squish that annoying Merlin for me?' That was an awful lot of power to have in my hands.

I'm not the nicest guy around; sure I generally try to stay on the straight and narrow, but I get tempted a lot. There's a part of me that really wants to have power, and there are plenty of old grudges that I would be badly tempted to settle if I actually had the power to do it. Sure, I know it would be wrong, but there's still a part of me that would absolutely love to see the Merlin dead at my hands. That's a scary thought to live with.

Of course, realistically if I actually tried to sic Rei on him, the Merlin wouldn't stick around for a straight-up fight he couldn't win; he'd do something intelligent, like run away, then kill me in my sleep a couple days later. So, even if I'd wanted to use the Evangelions to go the Dark Side, there were some serious practicality issues with it.

The Leanansidhe was still waiting for an answer, so I gave the most honest answer I could. "I don't really know what I'll do once the Angels are gone. I mean, who knows what's going to happen between now and then; things could go all kinds of crazy, and right now I'm mostly focused on surviving the next few months. I guess, if it were completely up to me, I'd have the Evangelions decommissioned, and try to let the kids just go back to having normal lives instead of being forced to pilot those things."

"I see. How decidedly boring." Lea smiled at me, and it was creepy. Well, Lea smiling at me had always been kind of creepy, what with her being a psycho death Faerie and all, but her gaunt, skeletal look made it extra-creepy. "Now, I believe I it is your turn to ask a question."

"Yeah, but you went and goofed up Lea, because you already answered the question I was going to ask." Well, to be strictly accurate she had just helped me figure out the answer on my own, but I wasn't going to let a little technicality like that stop me from actually managing to get one up on Lea. "It's obvious why the Summer and Winter Courts are nosing around the Evangelions now, it's the same reason they mess with anything; power. I kept thinking it must be about the war with the Angels, but that's just a side show to you guys; you're thinking about how to use the Evangelions in your own conflicts. No wonder Summer's people were trying to grab Shinji; as far as Summer in concerned I'm tied to Winter, and I've got Rei in my corner. Summer wanted to even the scales, get their own Evangelion pilot to balance the one they think Winter has."

The Leanansidhe looked very annoyed; if there's one thing Fae and Humans have in common, it's that we're both sore losers. Maybe rubbing it in hadn't been a good idea, but damn if it wasn't satisfying. "Guess that means I've got a free question now." There were a lot of things I wanted to know, and Lea probably had the answers to most of those questions. There were all kinds of mysteries surrounding my mother, hints that my father hadn't died of natural causes, the White Council's secrets, or even something more immediate like finding out more about the Angels and how they could be beaten. I had a huge opportunity here. "Well well well, what should I ask you?"

"You should ask me about the possession your mother left in my care." Lea helpfully supplied, her bad mood evaporating in a moment; in fact, now she seemed entirely too pleased with herself.

I had a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. "Please tell me you didn't count that as my question."

Lea gave me her biggest cat-ate-the-canary grin. "A question was asked and answered, sweet child. Our bargain is complete."

"Fuck me." I'm not the type to curse every other word, but I'll curse when it's appropriate, and sometimes there's not really any other way express how not-according-to-plan things have gone.

"If you truly wish to, I'm sure we could come to an arrangement on the matter." Lea supplied helpfully. "Though I must say, that is a rather inappropriate request to make of your godmother."

I ruthlessly crushed the tiny, hormone-driven part of my brain which found that offer intriguing. Even in her current famine victim form Lea wasn't exactly hard on the eyes; sure, she was unhealthily stick-thin, but that just made her look like an anorexic supermodel, and I had been having something of a dry spell. None of that changed the fact that it would be a horrendously bad idea. "Think I'll pass."

Lea gave an uncaring shrug. "As you wish."

"Right, now that we're done with that incredibly awkward moment, I don't suppose it would do any good to tell you that I was asking a rhetorical question, and you weren't supposed to answer it for me?"

"If you did not want me to answer your question, you should have said as much." Lea sighed and shot me an exasperated look. "Honestly, child, you cannot expect me to perfectly read your intentions every time you speak. Consider this a learning experience."

"Yeah, great, lesson learned. Does that mean I get my question back?"

From the look Lea gave me, you'd think I was a five year old asking for another cookie instead of one of those fearsomely powerful, subtle, and quick to anger wizards (though I never have gotten the subtle part down). "Ah, dear child, as your godmother one of my duties is to oversee your education and spiritual development, and in my experience lessons tend to be far more effective when there are negative consequences attached to failure."

"Super." I'd had a golden opportunity to finally get some answers about some of the big mysteries in my life, and a single slip of the tongue had cost me everything. "So, I guess that means I have answer another one of your questions before I can find out anything about whatever it was that my mother left in your care."

"Dear child, I don't believe you possess any knowledge that I would be willing to trade for the answers you seek." Lea smiled again, her eyes wide with interest. "Fortunately for you, the item you mother left in my care was part of a separate bargain 'twixt her and I, so no further price is required of you. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I will not require a price from you, but the item itself carries a dangerous legacy, and to accept it is to accept all that comes with it."

Curiouser and curiouser. "So what is this item, and what's the price?"

Lea closed one of her thin hands, and when she opened it again there was a small gleaming red gem resting in her palm. "It is the sum of your mother's knowledge of the Ways. Her skill at searching them out and predicting how they would change was so great that even the changes wrought by Second Impact have not rendered her knowledge obsolete. There are few, even amongst mine own kind, who can claim the same, especially after the Impact. 'Tis likely that with this, your knowledge of the Ways would exceed that of any mortal currently living, even the greatest wizards of your won the White Council."

Wow. That was … wow. Just using some of the reasonably well-known Ways connecting major cities had let me do some crazy things like hop from one continent to another in the span of a few hours. With this, I could go anywhere I damn well pleased. Hells bells, there had been so many times I'd been tempted to get out of a situation by hopping into the Nevernever, but decided against it because I had no idea what would be waiting for me on the other side; now that wouldn't be an issue any more. I could pretty much ignored mortal law enforcement, there was no way they could possibly capture or hold me, and even the Council would be hard-pressed to deal with someone who had absolute knowledge of the Ways.

That was a whole lot of power I could potentially abuse, and that kind of power never comes cheaply. I tried to keep my face steady and not let how intrigued I was by this little gem show. "You mentioned a price; what is it?"

Lea shrugged. "I couldn't say for certain; to date, it seems to have had different effects on those who bear it. It cost your mother the ability to sleep peacefully. For you, the price might be much higher, or perhaps it will be nothing at all. Beware though, such knowledge is a great burden, and 'tis possible that this burden could destroy ye. Think carefully, before taking this gem."

I thought about it. Once I'd actually given the matter a bit of thought, I realized that as tempting as having that power available was, I really didn't need it for any particular reason right now. Don't get me wrong, having perfect knowledge of the Ways would be hugely beneficial, but right now what I knew was good enough, and I had no idea what would happen to me once I took that little ruby; not even Lea knew for sure what the price would be. Yeah, it was tempting to just say to hell with the consequences and grab the power I was being offered on a silver platter, but if I really thought about it there was no reason to take the gem except to have it available if I should ever reach the point of needing it.

That particular issue was easily addressed. "If I didn't want the gem now, how hard would it be to get it later?"

"'Twould be simplicity itself, dear child." Lea began idly toying with the gem in her hands. "You need but invoke my name and speak thy need, and the gem will be delivered directly into thine hands."

That settled that then; the gem would occupy a similar place to that damned coin; kept somewhere safe and contained for now, but ready to be called upon if I should end up in a bad enough situation. The gem full of dangerous but useful knowledge would be a lot safer to use than the demon-filled coin, but it was still hazardous enough that I wasn't going to just start using it on a whim.

Any further conversation that might have passed between Lea and I came an abrupt end when I saw Lea's eyes widen slightly before a decidedly mischievous grin appeared on her face, and a second later I heard a soft feminine gasp from behind me, at the door to my lab. Sure enough, when I turned around there was a rather surprised-looking Maya Ibuki standing at the doorway to my lab. I decided to speak up quickly before Lea could figure out some way to mess with her. "Lea, I think we're done here; why don't you go do whatever it is you do when I'm not around."

"Oh?" Lea quirked a single red-gold eyebrow at me, an amused smile playing over her face. "But this conversation just got so much more interesting. Don't be rude Harry, introduce me to this fine young lady."

"How about no." I crossed my arms over my chest and hit Lea with the authoritative glare I'd managed to get reasonably good at thanks to having a rebellious-minded teenaged apprentice. "Go back to the Nevernever, or we're going to have a problem."

"So be it then." Lea's eyes shifted to the strangely alien cast of the Sidhe for a moment. Do bear in mind, dear child, that just because I am willing to indulge your childish fits of temper does not mean that others of my kind would be nearly so generous." Content with having gotten the last word in, Lea hopped back into the Nevernever, leaving a small mound of ice behind.

Now that Lea was gone, I finally gave Maya my full attention. "Sorry, you caught me in the middle of something. What is it Maya?"

Maya didn't manage much more than a blank stare at the space Lea had recently occupied. Sure, I'd sent out a general warning about Faeries and how they work to the Nerv staff after what happened with Shinji (though I'd left out the fact that Aurora only got to him because he tried to run away), but there's a big difference between reading a warning about how Faeries exist, and actually seeing one in the flesh. Eventually, she managed to gather her wits enough speak. "That – that was an Elf."

"Actually, that was a Sidhe; the Ancient Norse kinda used the word Elf as a catch-all for lots of different types of Faeries, but Tolkein based his Elves off the most human-like of them, the Sidhe, and everyone after that followed his lead." Maya's only response was that kind of blank look most normal people get whenever I try to explain various aspects of the supernatural world. I decided to take mercy on the poor woman, or else she'd be standing around shell-shocked all day. "Was there something you needed Maya?"

"Oh! Right." Like most of the Nerv staff, Maya seemed to have a bit of a knack for putting aside world-shaking trauma and getting back to functioning. I guess that's a sensible thing to look for in employees, considering Nerv's line of work. Nerv couldn't afford to have its key personnel hysterically screaming about how the Angels should not exist when there was a battle to be won. Within a few moments, Maya had at least started wrapping her mind around the fact that Sidhe existed, and got back to business. "Sempai, sent me to let you know that Rei's reactivation test will be starting soon. You'll want to be there, right?"

"Yes, of course. Thank you Maya." I hadn't meant for the meeting with Lea to go quite that long, but Lea's always preferred to move around her own schedule and expect me to accommodate her.

The two of us were halfway to Experiment Station 3 before Maya spoke up again. "Um, if Elves exist, does that mean other things like Orks and Dwarves are real too? What about things from Japanese mythology, like Oni and Kitsune? Or –"

I held up a hand to forestall the barrage of questions. "For the most part, yes; a lot of ancient folklore is derived from encounters with creatures from the Nevernever, so if it's part of traditional folklore, odds are pretty good that it exists in some form. Of course, a lot of the more recent productions aren't that accurate, artistic license and commercialization trumps being true to folklore nine times out of ten, and even the real old folklore can be a bit hit-or-miss when it comes the little details." I considered for a moment, and with a shrug added. "I'm no expert on Japanese folklore, but I'd assume it's the same there as it is everywhere else; in fact, I think I remember Ebenezar mentioning that he had dealings with the Tengu once."

You know, considering all that, I should probably try to bone up on my Japanese folklore some; if the Faerie Courts were going to be nosing around and playing power games, odds were decent I'd run into some of the critters out of local folklore sooner or later. In this line of work, knowing what you were up against was often the difference between winning and getting your ass kicked. Knowledge is power an all that.

Maya seemed to take a few seconds to chew over the possibility that all the creatures from her childhood fairy tales might actually exist, and then did what a lot of people do when they have to deal with those kinds of scary, world-altering facts; she changed the subject. "By the way, I think something happened between Shinji and Rei. The two of them came in together, and he seemed really nervous."

"Oh." I made a mental note to ask Rei if anything had happened. I suppose I could ask Shinji, but the kid wasn't exactly brimming with social confidence, and if there was some kind problem putting him on the spot would only make things worse. At least the two of them being related to each other meant that I shouldn't have to worry about the sort of things that normally cause trouble and awkwardness between teenaged boys and girls. Judging by the slight smile playing over Maya's face, I guessed that was her current working theory, but then Maya didn't know about the fact that Rei was Shinji's half-alien mother –clone/sister thing. That was going to look weird on the family tree.

Not long after that we finally arrived at Experiment Station 3. Everyone important at Nerv was there for Rei's restart test, which seems a bit odd since you'd think people wouldn't want to hang around and see if the Evangelion that went crazy and nearly killed a bunch of people last time would do the same thing again. The Bastard, Fuyutsuki, and Ritsuko had front-row seats, while Shinji and Misato were sitting at the back of the room, where they could see what was going on but wouldn't get in the way. Maya shot a glance over her shoulder at me, and then offered. "Sempai thought you might want to say something to Rei to before we started the test."

"Yeah, sure." That sounded a little sentimental for Ritsuko, but when I thought about it I could guess at her cold, practical reasoning behind it; the current working theory was that Unit 00 malfunctioned because of mental instability within Rei, so having the one person she'd formed any kind of mental connection to say a few words to her before we tried again made perfect sense.

I stepped up to one of the consoles , and Maya tapped a few keys, then handed me a microphone. "Rei."

"Mr. Dresden." Maybe I was just imagining it, but I was sure I could hear a little bit of relief in her voice.

"You ready?"

"Yes."

"Don't worry, I'm sure everything will go fine." I'll admit that sounded a little lame to me, but it was the best thing I could think of to say.

Rei's response was typically laconic. "Yes."

I couldn't really think of anything else to say to her that wouldn't sound like an empty platitude, so I settled on a simple. "Good luck."

There was a brief silence before Rei took a moment to say. "I realized you do not have a video connection in the Experiment Box. I nodded."

I'm not completely sure why I found that so funny, but I laughed anyway, and I saw a couple other people chuckling as well. Gendo, whose sense of humor had obviously entered into a suicide pact with his sense of human decency a long time ago, simply remained stone-faced as he said. "Dr. Akagi, begin the reactivation test."

Ritsuko and the other technical staff started up with the technobabble, and I moved over to join Misato and Shinji. I saw the kid shoot a nervous glance in my direction, and it wasn't hard to guess what his thought process was. Wizards kind of have a reputation for knowing things, so Shinji was probably wondering if I knew whatever had happened with Rei that he was so nervous about. Sure, actually reading Shinji's mind would be a big no-no, but that wasn't going to stop the poor kid from being nervous that I might somehow pluck the knowledge out of his head.

We got to the really dicey part of the activation where things had gone wrong last time, and I spent a minute or so not breathing, until we got past there and Unit 00 successfully activated. Now that the Evangelion had successfully activated, they moved on to the rest of the routine diagnostics and startup tests.

Things had been going way too well so far; Rei's reactivation test had gone off without a single hiccup. I should have taken that as a warning sign; our luck is never that good. Sure enough, we were only about a minute into running all the secondary tests on Unit 00 when a call came in. Fuyutsuki answered the phone, heard whatever the person on the other had to say, and then hung up. "There's an unidentified flying object heading towards Tokyo-3; they believe it's the Fifth Angel. Unit 00 is already activated and has a pilot in place and ready to go." Fuyutsuki added. "Shall we send Rei out?"

Gendo turned to Ritsuko. "Dr. Akagi, is Unit 00 combat ready?"

Ritsuko shook her head. "We could use it if we absolutely had to, but it wouldn't be ideal; our top priority was getting the Evangelion up and running at al; we still haven't uploaded the targeting software for any of the long-range weapons, and there will probably be calibrations and adjustments that need to be made to the unit itself to maximize its performance."

"I see. Send out Unit 01 instead then."

I could see Shinji slump at the prospect of going out to fight again. A part of him had probably been hoping that since Rei was already loaded into her Evangelion she would be the one to fight this time. Shinji was halfway out the door when he suddenly paused, and turned to look back at his father. It wasn't hard to guess what he was hoping for; much like an abused puppy, Shinji kept going back to his father in the hopes of getting a little bit of affection. Instead of a few encouraging words, Gendo just glared at the boy and growled. "What are you waiting for? Move out, pilot."

Shinji sighed, and made his way out of the room. After several seconds of mental struggle, I successfully resisted the urge to smash the Bastard through a few walls, set him on fire, or knock half his teeth out with my staff. Insulting the man, however, was perfectly acceptable. "Nice work Ikari; real father-of-the-year material right there." Just in case the sarcasm didn't translate as well as I'd hoped, I added. "Has anyone ever told you that you're a gigantic douchebag?"

Judging by the looks I was getting, most people in the room were torn between being shocked that I'd just insulted the Commander of Nerv to his face and the fact that deep down, they agreed with me. For his part, Gendo simply ignored the insult and walked out of the room.

About six minutes later, we were all at the command center, and Shinji was ready to launch down at the cages. Once we finally got video of the Fifth Angel, I couldn't help but snicker. "Great, Nerv is under attack by a gigantic d8 of doom." Maya got it, but other than that the joke fell flat; guess there aren't a lot of role-players at Nerv.

Once the Fifth Angel had a code name, Lash popped up to offer her opinion on the matter. "The real Ramiel is not an eight-sided dice. Of course, I doubt this particular creature will share his rather perverse interest in humanity." Now that's the kind of comment that just begs for a bit of explanation. "Ramiel was one of the leaders of those who Fell due to their fondness for indulging pleasures of the flesh with humankind. He produced several Nephelim. Shamshiel shared his tastes, incidentally."

This reminded me that Lash hadn't actually offered any commentary about the Fourth Angel when they'd named it Shamshiel, which made me curious enough to ask her why it hadn't come up. "I hadn't thought it necessary." Lash explained with a smile. "After all, you've me Shamshiel, and even exchanged words with him, so obviously you would be aware of how inaccurate that particular name was without my input."

It didn't take me long to put it all together; it's not like I've met that many Fallen. Great; Shamshiel was one of Nickelheads. "Shamshiel's current host is known to you by the name Rosanna." Lash helpfully supplied for me. "Ramiel, however, is not among the ranks of the Denarians."

Any further explorations of angelic trivia were cut off by Shinji's launch. Shinji hadn't even made it up to the surface yet when things started to go horribly wrong.

"We're getting a high-energy reading from the target!" Aoba announced.

"Aw crap." Ritsuko and Misato echoed my sentiment, or at least I assume that whatever Ritsuko was saying about the energy signature basically boiled down to that.

Within an instant of Shinji's arrival on the surface, not-Ramiel let out an eerie high-pitched shrieking moan, then suddenly transformed and unleashed a giant frickin' laser beam aimed right at the Evangelion's chest. Unit 01 was still locked into the catapult; even if Shinji had gotten more than half second's advanced warning, it would have been just about impossible to dodge the attack without ripping free of the catapult and damaging both it and his Evangelion. The catapult locks automatically released less than a second after the laser hit, but that was a second too late to do Shinji any good.

Misato was yelling at Shinji to try and dodge, but according the monitors the LCL temperature in his entry plug had just spiked about fifty degrees and it was still going up. Between that and the normal feedback, the kid was in way too much pain to even think straight, even after they cut sychro ratio down to the absolute minimum. Luckily, NERV strategists covered every possible (and some impossible) scenarios. On Misato's command, a thick shield shot up between Shinji and the Angel. Unfortunately, not-Ramiel clearly subscribed to the theory that when using a gun fails, the solution is to use more gun.

This time Ramiel shifted into some sort weird crucifix-like shape, and then each of the Angel's arms fired its own laser, which all met at the middle to become one really, really big laser. The shield lasted almost ten seconds before it was completely vaporized, and then there was nothing standing between Shinji and Ramiel's fury.

Shinji, being a relatively sane individual, started screaming at us at the top his lungs to get him the hell out of there.

Misato clearly agreed with him. "Abort the mission! Get him out of there now!"

"We can't!" One of the techs announced "The catapult's been completely melted!"

"Then eject the pilot!"

"No." If the fact that his son was screaming in terror and pain had any effect on the Bastard, he wasn't showing it.

"The AT Field is the only thing keeping Shinji alive and the Eva in one piece." Ritsuko added. "If we tried to eject Unit 01 would be lost and the entry plug would probably still be destroyed before it got clear of the Angel's blast."

Alright, they'd had enough time to figure out a solution on their own, and all the time they were talking Shinji was busy boiling in his entry plug and begging someone to help him. Time for me to do something.

I must have set a speed record moving from the command center to the cages, and as soon as I was underneath the catapult I cut loose with the strongest spell I could manage while consciously avoiding adding any Helfire to it. "Fuego!"

Just as I'd hoped it would, my blast of fire tore through all three sets of blast doors sealing off the catapult from the surface before bouncing off Unit 01's AT field. Moments later gravity took hold, and Shinji was dropping down to safety.

That's when I realized the flaw in my plan. A couple thousand tons of Evangelion was dropping straight down, and a certain friendly neighborhood wizard was standing right at the bottom of that drop. I hadn't really thought that part of it through.

Just as I was about to raise my shield and hope that would be enough to keep me unsquished, something slammed into my side, and I went flying away from Unit 01's impact zone. About a second after I was thrown clear of the area, the entire facility shook from the impact of Unit 01 slamming into the ground.

I took second to collect my thoughts, wonder just what that force that knocked me clear of the crashing Evangelion was, and then got up and dusted myself off. I could see engineers and a medical team swarming the damaged Evangelion, while Misato hovered around the periphery. Rei was there too, seemingly content to stand in the background watching events unfold.

I joined Misato in worriedly hovering around the sidelines until Shnji was out of the entry plug and into the hands of the medics. Before long, we had a preliminary report from the medics; the kid had taken a beating and his heart had actually stopped for a bit, but we weren't in any danger of losing him now.

Misato simply nodded to the medic and just silently watched as the medical crew rushed Shinji to the hospital. After a few silent seconds, I spoke up. "Don't worry, he'll be alright."

"Yeah." Misato looked after Shinji for a second longer, and then visibly shook her worries off. "Yeah, he'll be fine. Come on, you can help me figure out a way to kill the thing that did this to him."


	15. Harry XIII

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

There were enough people crowded into the Operations meeting room that I was pretty lucky to have a chair to sit in (though my theoretical Nerv rank probably had more to do with luck). Misato and Ritsuko both had pretty much every significant member of their support staff crowded into the room, in the hour or so since Shinji's first disastrous sortie against the Fifth Angel, pretty much everyone had been doing everything they could to find some way to take the thing down. For a brief, irrational moment a part of me almost wished I'd dragged some of my friends into this mess, just so I could have my own set of lackeys in the room as well.

"Alright people, let's get started. Give me something we can use to kill this bastard." It was a little strange to see that grim, determined look on Misato's face. I guess what happened to Shinji had her down; we'd come way too close to losing the kid, so I couldn't blame her. I wasn't exactly happy about it myself. Lucky for us, Misato was channeling her grief, worry, and anger into the very productive outlet of finding some way to kill this thing.

One of her staff officers spoke up. "From the data we collected using mock-up dummies, we've determined that the enemy will automatically fire on any hostile that comes within around two kilometers of its position." One of the room's map displays shifted to show a large red circle showing the area in question. "So far, it's fired with perfect accuracy and destroyed the target instantly."

"Do we have anything that can stand up to sustained fire from its beam weapon?"

Ritsuko sighed and shook her head. "The closest thing we've been able to find is the heat shield off one of the scrapped prototypes for the SSTO spacecraft. It won't be hard to convert it into something the Eva can use, but even then our best estimate is that it won't last very long under a full-intensity blast from the Fifth Angel."

Misato let out an annoyed grunt. "So getting our Evas into close combat isn't an option. That's going to make neutralizing its AT field difficult. How strong of an AT field are we dealing with here?"

"So far, it's the strongest AT field we've encountered." Maya answered. "On top of that, it keeps its phase pattern constantly shifting. That's the reason it changes shape so often. Since the phase pattern keeps changing, neutralizing the field is going to be extremely difficult, even if we could get an Eva into optimal range. If we have to keep the Evas outside of the Angel's kill zone, I don't think it can be done."

"Great, so it's got a perfect point defense system, and even if we could get something past that its defenses are just about unbreakable." Misato sighed and leaned back in her chair. "The thing's just a big flying fortress. Do we have anything in our arsenal that might be able to hurt it?"

"I had Magi run some scenarios." Another member of Misato's staff spoke up. "According to its calculations, a large N2 bombardment should be capable of penetrating the AT field and destroying the Angel. However, the amount of firepower we'd need to actually take down the Angel would destroy Tokyo-3 and Nerv headquarters along with it."

"Same problem with any type of magical attack." I added in. With a stationary target and several hours to do my work, I could probably whip up some kind of nasty magical attack that actually had a decent chance of hurting the Angel, especially since there was that nice ley line nexus underneathTokyo-3 to draw plenty of raw power from. Problem was, one of the general rules about magic is that the more raw power you sling around, the harder it is maintain control of the spell. With the kind of power I'd need to sling to stand any chance of hurting an Angel, I'd be lucky to have enough control left to point my attack in the Angel's general direction. On top of that, my best spell for nasty backstabbing whammy magic was my gravity crusher spell, and using that on an Angel positioned directly above Nerv HQ was a bad idea.

"So hitting it with our conventional or unconventional weapons isn't going to do any good." Misato glared at one of the many images of the Fifth Angel. "What about the drill it's using? What kind of progress is it making?"

"It just finished penetrating the second armor plate. According to Magi's calculations, so long as it maintains the current rate of progress, it will break into Nerv HQ shortly after midnight."

"Does anyone have any ideas why it's just drilling a small hole into the Geofront instead of blasting its way through? It's not like the thing is short on firepower."

"From what we've seen so far, it probably can't blast more than one thing at a time." I offered. "If it were using its energy weapon to penetrate the armor plating, that would make it more vulnerable to a counterattack. No reason to compromise its unbeatable defenses just to save a couple hours of time, and since it can shapeshift, even a fairly small hole's enough to give it a way in."

"Well, at least that gives us some time to work with." Misato tossed a quick glance at her watch. "We've got a little more than ten hours before it penetrates into the Geofront, that should be enough time to come up with something. What's the status of the Evas?"

"Getting Unit 00 fully calibrated would take days; we can get it functional, but it won't be capable of any delicate or complicated movement." Ritsuko reported. "On top of that, Unit 01 can't be fully repaired with the time we have. We can replace to armor and fix the worst of the tissue damage, but too much strenuous maneuvering could cause problems."

"What about the status of Unit 01's pilot?"

"Roughly the same as his Evangelion." The head of Nerv's medical staff answered. "We managed to treat the scalding to his face, it shouldn't be much worse than a nasty sunburn, and the plugsuit kept him from suffering any burns to the rest of his body. He also has first-degree burns to the chest from sympathetic feedback. However, what has me concerned is a minor compression fracture to the fourth lumbar vertebrae. There will be some pain and numbness, but it shouldn't seriously impede his ability to perform in combat. However, it is still a spinal injury, and if you send him into combat…"

"Any strenuous activity could worsen his injury." Misato finished, slumping down into her chair and looking like she'd just aged several years. "How did he get a spinal injury anyway?"

The doctor shot a nervous look in my direction. "Spinal injuries of this type are often caused by falling"

Oh. A lance of guilt stabbed into my guts. Even though the alternative had been letting Shinji get boiled alive, I couldn't help but feel bad about the fact that my rescue wound up actually hurting the kid.

"Is he physically capable of piloting?" Ritsuko asked.

The doctor shifted around uncomfortably for a second before answering. "Under normal circumstance I would put him on medical leave for a week, maybe longer. However…" There was an uncomfortable silence; we all knew the situation was far from normal, and that with the stakes we were up against there might not be any choice but to send the kid out injured. After all, if the Third Impact happened he'd die along with everyone else. Didn't mean we had to like it though. "If necessary, we can put him on painkillers, and a back brace will lessen the chances of worsening his spinal injury, though at the cost of his range of motion."

"We'll keep it in mind." Misato's voice was barely above a whisper. "So we have, two half-functioning Evas, one injured pilot, and an Angel with incredibly long-range offensive and defensive capabilities. If anyone's got a brilliant idea they've been saving, now's the time to chime in."

"Have we tried nicely asking it to leave?" It was a bad joke, but I got a few laughs; as nervous as people were, anything to relieve the tension was welcome.

"Maybe we could ask for a cease fire." Someone else suggested.

"Tell it that it got mixed up, and it actually wants to go to Tokyo-2, not Tokyo-3." I liked that suggestion; it would distract the Angel and get rid of a bunch of politicians; I call that a win.

I felt it time to toss in another suggestion, lest I be out-smartassed. "Thing seems like shooting giant lasers, so maybe we should shoot it with a giant laser. We could mount the whole thing in a giant space station, give it a really cool name, like the 'Death Star' or something."

"Shoot it with a big laser?" Misato repeated, frowning in thought, and then a smile slowly formed on her face. "Oh, I just got a really interesting idea." She turned to one of her aides. "Hyuga, Intelligence still has records on the SSDF's top secret research projects, right?"

"What?" The man in question blinked in surprise, and took a moment to process the unexpected question. "Yes, I think so, why?"

By now Misato's smile was positively predatory. "I just found the giant laser to shoot it with."

* * *

With most of Nerv's staff busy implementing Miosato's plan, there wasn't much for me to do; even if I'd gotten a bit better at not killing tech just by being in the same room as it, I was still pretty clueless about how it all worked. Lucky for me, somebody needed to brief Rei on her role in the plan, and I'd actually been planning to have a chat with her anyway, so that worked out perfectly for everyone involved.

Rei herself was at Nerv's cafeteria; between the reactivation test and the Angel attack, she'd missed lunch and not gotten much of a breakfast, and at her age missing a couple meals was a pretty big deal. Heck, when I'd been that age food was about the only thing that interested me almost as much as the opposite sex did.

"Hey kid." I walked up and took a seat next to Rei, who paused her efficient, rapid-fire consumption of her meal long enough to acknowledge my presence. "We got things to talk about, but not in the middle of the cafeteria." I saw a very slight frown on Rei's face. "You can bring the food with you." The frown disappeared; half-alien clone or not, a hungry teenager is still a hungry teenager.

The two of us went back to my Nerv lab, and Rei took a seat at one of my work tables, setting her food down and digging back into it, though she kept the majority of her attention focused on me. I took that as a signal to say what I had to say. "Well, I need to brief you on the plan for Operation Yashima, but before we do that there's something else we need to discuss. When Unit 01 was about to fall down on top of me, something knocked me out of the way."

Rei finished chewing a mouthful of rice and swallowed. "I utilized my AT field to remove you from the potential hazard." Having said her piece, she promptly filled her mouth with more rice.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by the direct, matter-of-fact way she said it; Rei was never one to mince words. I hadn't known for sure that she actually had an AT field, but considering the fact that she was basically an Angel/Human hybrid it wasn't a surprise. "How long have you been able to use an AT field like that?"

"Since my creation." Rei paused for a moment, and then added. "I do not know if the First was capable of utilizing her AT field for her entire existence; my recollection of her experiences is imperfect. However, regardless of my capacity to utilize my AT field, I am under orders from the Commander not to utilize my AT field under any circumstances." The girl hesitated for a long moment, and then said. "You did state that if I felt that the Commanders orders were in error I was not obligated to obey them."

The gaze Rei settled on me was a touch more intense than usual, and it wasn't hard to guess what she was looking for. "Yeah. You did good, Rei." That got a very small smile out of her, before she went back to eating her food.

I took the time Rei spent finishing her meal to mull things over. It figured that Rei wasn't supposed to use her AT field; Rei's hybrid nature wouldn't stay secret for long if she openly used an ability that only Angels had. Of course, there were some problems with the exact way her orders had been worded. Hell's bells, the First Rei might well have been entirely capable of protecting herself from Naoko Akagi using her AT field, but she'd let the woman kill her instead of going against Gendo's orders. Then again, Gendo probably figured if Rei got killed he could just activate a new one; putting the proverbial cat back into the bag would be a lot harder to manage. That was typical cold bastard logic for him.

The fact that now Rei had gone against what Gendo told her to do was certainly a good sign, and I won't deny that the fact she did it to protect me produced a nice warm feeling in my chest. Of course, we'd have to be careful about that; if it got out that Rei was starting to see obeying his orders as optional, the Bastard's reaction would not be pleasant. That's not to mention that the AT field was a seriously dangerous thing to use; if what I'd seen of them so far was any indication, Rei could easily have put me through a couple walls if she'd tossed too much power into her field, and the walls at Nerv were thick, steel-reinforced concrete.

Sure, you could go with Gendo's solution of just telling to never, ever use that power, but in the long term that's just not a practical choice. Well, maybe it had been practical before, when Gendo had her so detached from the rest of the human world that she'd more or less been an order-following automaton, but I'd put an end to that by encouraging her to think for herself and make her own decisions about what she wanted in life. Considering the sort of life Rei led, odds were good that whatever she cared about would be threatened at some point, Either by the Angels or by some of the human or supernatural people flitting around the edges of Nerv looking to exploit the Evangelion for their own gain. Like any normal person, Rei would use everything at her disposal to protect the things she loved when they were threatened.

The AT field was Power with a capital P; if she was going wield that kind power, she needed to know how to control it. More importantly than how to use it, she needed to learn why she should use that power. In a lot of ways, the things Rei needed to learn were the exact same things any budding wizard needed to know.

It didn't take long to follow that line of thought to its logical end point. Sure, I might not be able to generate an AT field, but I knew a fair amount about the AT field, and a lot of its applications weren't that dissimilar to some of the things you could do with magic. It wasn't perfect, but all things considered I was probably the best-qualified person around for the task of teaching Rei how to use her AT field, and I could definitely teach her a lot about why she should use that power. I even had experience teaching teenage girl apprentices those kinds of lessons, though about the only thing Rei had in common with Molly was that there had been times when both of them had blue hair.

"Rei, now that you've started using your AT field, you need to learn how to use it properly, and how to use it responsibly. Those lessons are going to take a while."

Rei regarded me with obvious interest. "You will be teaching me these things?"

"Yeah." I briefly tried to remember the speech I'd given Molly when she started her apprenticeship, before I realized that it really wouldn't work in this case. Like I said, Molly and Rei are about as different as you could get. With Molly, most of my trouble had come from that she had inherited every single bit of her mother's stubborn willfulness, and combined it with classic teenaged rebellion. Making her understand that there was a world of difference between getting her nose pierced or dying her hair colors Charity wouldn't approve and breaking one of the Laws of Magic had been hard; to her teenaged brain, they were both arbitrary rules to be rebelled against. Well, that had been one of the problems I'd had with Molly, but hopefully Rei wasn't nursing a huge teenage crush on me like Molly had.

With Rei, I was pretty sure the last thing I would need to worry about was her deliberately disobeying my instructions just to prove that she could. I mean, until recently she'd been pretty much perfectly obedient no matter what. In a lot of ways, teaching Rei was going to be nothing like teaching Molly, so a pretty big chunk of my teaching experience was going right out the window. Oh well, I still knew more than I did when I'd started training Molly, and I'd managed to not mess things up too badly with her.

"There are a couple of things you'll need to know about how your training will go, Rei." I kept my voice soft and friendly; unlike Molly, didn't need a wakeup call that magic was serious business, and teenage rebellion wasn't acceptable. "First off, it's going to be extra work on top of what you'll be doing at Nerv and school, though I'll try not to dump too much on you at once. Secondly, you'll need to forget what I said about not always obeying orders when it comes to those lessons; I don't think I need to tell you that the AT field isn't something you can mess around with."

Rei nodded, and a few moments later actually spoke. "When will we begin?"

I gave a vague wave of my hand. "Later, once things have settled down a bit; right now there's an Angel to deal with. Which brings me to the second reason I needed to talk to you; Misato's come up with a way to kill the thing, and I'm supposed to brief you."

I pulled a copy of the mission plan out of my duster, and passed it over to Rei. "You should have time to read it on your own and get all the little details, but for now I'll sum up the important bits. Since the Angel will automatically target and fire on anything that gets too close, we're going to have to take it down from long range. Misato managed to find a prototype gun the military was working on that we think should have enough power to actually punch through the Fifth Angel's AT field when fired from the secondary base in Matsushiro. The plan's pretty simple; use the big gun to destroy the Angel's core at long range. We'll have to take it down with one shot though; we might be outside the range where it will automatically target us, but if it knows we're there it will go after us, and we don't have much that can stand up to that thing's firepower.

"There are a couple of issues; the whole reason the JSSDF scrapped the program was because the power requirements for a giant laser canon are insanely huge. Ritsuko's pretty sure they can jury-rig a setup to get enough power to actually run the thing, but it's going to be wonky as hell. That's the other reason they want to try and take the Angel down in one shot; they're not sure we can recharge the gun fast enough to get a second shot out in time if the first one doesn't do the job. It's also why I'm staying at the base here; with as delicate as the whole setup is going to be, they don't want to risk having my techbane field around." There was also the fact that I was the emergency last-ditch backup before self-destructing the base, but Rei didn't need to know that in the worst-case scenario I'd cut a literal deal with the devil to stop one of the Angels.

"Next up, there's the fact that since the JSSDF never actually completed development of the gun, it doesn't have any targeting system. Apparently, they've got a work-around that involves running all the targeting data through the Evangelion's targeting system and basically using Unit 01 as a sniper. Since Shinji's still injured, you're going to be in Unit 01; Unit 00 still hasn't been fine-tuned enough to handle something this delicate."

"And Pilot Ikari?" Huh, she was showing a bit more interest in Shinji than the usual vague detachment she treated most people with. As far as I was concerned, that was good news; it's not like I minded being her friend, but she needed to have some interaction with people her own age, and for that matter having a friend would help Shinji too. That's not to mention that having the two Evangelion pilots be friends with each other would be convenient in a lot of ways; not to mention that it would probably help with teamwork.

"He'll be backing you up in Unit 00, if he's up for it. The tech people have a shield that should be able to take the brunt of a single blast from the Fifth Angel. If everything goes pear-shaped, he'll step in and try to protect you until the laser's ready to fire again." I grimaced, and got to the troublesome part of the discussion of Shinji's role in the mission. "Thing is, he's still injured, and the docs are afraid that if we send him into battle he could do even more damage to himself, possibly even permanent damage. With the current mission plan it's not very likely, but things don't always go according to plan."

"It would seem inadvisable to deploy Pilot Ikari in a mission that could damage his long-term piloting capabilities." Rei really had taken an interest in the kid.

"You and Shinji starting to become friends?" I tried to keep my tone casual enough that Rei wouldn't feel like I was putting her on the spot. After all, I wanted to encourage her to be friends with Shinji, not scare her off by unexpectedly subjecting her to the Spanish Inquisition.

"He delivered my new security card to my apartment this morning. We spoke afterwards. It was informative." I guess that was Rei-speak for 'we had a nice talk, and got to know each other a bit.' Good to know. After a moment, Rei added a bit more. "Pilot Ikari shares your beliefs about the Commander."

"Oh." Well, I guess that figured; a lifetime of neglect would've given Shinji plenty of time to start building up resentment towards his bastard of a father. Probably explained why the kid had been nervous when he got into Nerv HQ too; odds were, his father was pretty close to the top of the list of things he was not comfortable talking about.

"You did not respond to my statement about the possible long-term effects on Ikari's health." Rei reminded me.

"Oh, right." I'd have rather avoided that particular topic. Nobody liked the idea of sending Shinji into battle in a state that could him seriously, permanently hurt. Sure, any rational evaluation of the situation will tell you that with the stakes Nerv was playing for risking the health of one of their pilots was a no-brainer, but people aren't logical creatures. No matter how rational it was, we were still knowingly and deliberately putting the kid in harm's way. Sure, Misato had him in a backup role where he hopefully wouldn't have to actually do anything but stand around and wait, but the kid was still getting tossed into the line of fire.

"Yeah, Shinji might seriously hurt himself if he fights, but if the Third Impact happens he'll die along with everyone else, and having him there improves our odds of beating the Fifth Angel." I let out a long breath. "I don't think anyone likes it, but that's how it is. The stakes are too high; we have to ask him to pilot again." I frowned in thought for a moment. "Of course, all we can really do is ask him; considering the situation, I don't think anyone would have the heart to force him to pilot if he didn't want to." Well, the Bastard was heartless enough to try, but at the end of the day if Shinji didn't want to pilot, we couldn't exactly force him to, and even Gendo ultimately had to answer to higher-ups, even if they usually gave him a pretty free hand.

After a silence a silence that stretched just long enough to start getting a bit uncomfortable, I gathered myself and said one last thing. "By the way Rei, do you think you could go by the hospital and handle Shinji's briefing? Maybe bring him a fresh suit and something to eat too, while you're at it." As long as I was trying to get the two of them to be friends, sending her there to check up on him in the hospital was good move. Yeah, it wasn't exactly subtle, but at least I had the quick to anger part of being wizard down.

Rei fixed her gaze on me for several seconds, and I had to avert my eyes again to avoid a soul-gaze Maybe I should just gaze her already and get it over with; it couldn't be that much worse than when I saw her with my Sight (especially since that experience had already given me some idea what to expect). Rei slowly nodded. "I understand. Once he has recovered sufficiently, I will brief Pilot Ikari on the situation."

"Great, thanks Rei." I tried to give her a smile, but I'm not sure how genuine I managed to make it look. "Tell you what, after the Angel's down, we can all get together and get some pizza or something." Assuming it all didn't go horribly wrong, of course.

* * *

"Shinji's late." Misato sighed, and slumped down into her chair.

I checked the time. It was a little bit after 8:00 (well, 20:00 if you wanted to be technical, since Nerv ran on military time); the pilots were supposed to be at the cages by 7:30, and ready to launch at 8:00. Unsurprisingly, Rei had shown upright on time, and was now patiently waiting off to the side. "Misato, the kid was late fifteen minutes ago. I don't think he's showing."

Misato sighed again, and slowly nodded. "Probably not. Guess it's not surprising, I mean, he always hated piloting the Evas, and now we asked him to climb right back in hours after he almost got killed in action, not to mention the risk of injury."

"Yeah." I gave a sigh of my own. "To be honest, I can't really blame him. Hells bells, if I was him I probably would've been long gone by now. And we're not even sure if he can sync with Unit 00 anyway."

Misato gave a noncommittal grunt. "In any case, we can't wait any longer for him. Rei, it's time to move out."

Rei nodded. She was already halfway to the door when I called out to her. "Hey, Rei." The girl in question turned to look at me. "Kick its ass."

Rei frowned very slightly. "I do not believe that will possible Harry. From what we've been able to determine so far, the Angel does not have a posterior." The girl paused for a moment, and then added. "However, the Angel does possess shape shifting capabilities, so it is possible that it might adopt a form which has one. Should it do so, I will proceed to kick it in that location."

Misato looked at me, then at Rie, then back at me again. "Am I going crazy, or did Rei just make a joke?"

I shrugged and grinned. "What can I say, I'm a bad influence on her. Give her another month and she'll probably be as much of a wiseass as I am, and with as flat and serious as she always is you'll never be able to tell if she's snarking you or not. There's not a single sarcasm detector in the entire world that's good enough to catch her." It took every bit of willpower I had to resist urge to indulge in a bout of random evil cackling, and a malevolent chuckle or two might have slipped out.

Despite all the stress and worry she had to deal with, my bad jokes managed to get a weak laugh out of Misato. "What madness have you unleashed, Harry?" Misato turned her attention to Rei. "Rei, from now on, whenever you're being sarcastic you should raise your hand or something to let me know."

"I believe there may be merit in that suggestion, Lt. Colonel Katsuragi." Rei responded neutrally.

Misato stared searchingly at Rei for several seconds, but the pilot's face was in its normal state of unreadable blankness. Finally, she turned in my direction and raised a single questioning eyebrow. I shrugged. Finally, the woman just sighed and ordered Rei down to the cages. Once the pilot of Unit 00 was gone, Misato turned to me and said. "Now I'm going to have to check every single thing that comes out of that girl's mouth for wiseassery. Thanks for that, Harry, I needed a little extra stress." Misato's sarcasm was much less subtle than Rei's (if that had actually been sarcasm, I wasn't sure either).

I answered her snark with a shrug and a grin. "It's what I do, and I'm the best there is at what I do."

Misato rolled her eyes at me. "What you do is find way to annoy the hell out of everyone around you." Despite the fact that there wasn't anything funny there, we shared a laugh anyway.

Once we were done, Misato got serious again. "Anyway, I need to get started prepping for the mission." The Lt. Colonel hesitated for a moment before she spoke again. "Harry, could you do me a favor and try to have find Shinji and – well just make sure he's alright? If he doesn't want to pilot it's fine; now that Rei's recovered and Asuka's on the way and he's injured I won't force him to pilot, but, well, could you just…" She trailed off uncertainly

"You're worried about him." I finished for her. "Don't worry, I'll find him, and we'll have a little chat."

"Alright. Thanks Harry." That matter settled, Misato went back to preparing for the fight with the Fifth Angel, and I got down to my own task.

Finding Shinji wasn't that hard; I could've gone with another tracking spell to find him, but it was a lot quicker and less troublesome to just make a couple quick calls to the hospital staff and the security people. The kid wasn't exactly trying to hide; if Misato had really wanted to, she could've found him and sent some of the security good to drag him down to the cages.

Shinji had apparently gone for a bit of a walk around the hospital, and was currently hanging out on an open walkway between two of the towers hanging down from the top of the Geofront. The view was pretty nice, though I admit it was a little freaky to be in a tower that was hanging down from the ceiling instead of being rooted down in the ground. I guess it was as good a place as any for Shinji to stand around and think about all the crazy crap he'd been going through lately. I casually strode up and stood next to him. "Hey."

Shinji looked over at me, and then went back to studying the scenery. I guess that was as much of an answer as I was likely to get out of him. "You know, you were supposed to be down at the cages an hour ago." I gave a slight wince after the words left my mouth; that came out a little harsher than I'd meant it to. I softened it up a bit with the follow-up. "Misato's worried about you."

"So she sent you to get me, and make me pilot? That's all you care about it, isn't it?" Oh joy, Shinji was having a teen moment. Granted, he was going for the sullen resentful angle instead of loud and angry, but having to train Molly had taught me that teen moments could manifest in all kinds of different ways.

Lucky for me, I'd also learned a thing or two about dealing with teen moment, and I just stood there, silently; in his current mood there was no point in trying to argue with the kid. Sure enough, after a minute or so Shinji snapped himself out of his funk, and quietly apologized. "Sorry, I know it's not like that. It's just … I don't want to get back into the Eva. I'm scared."

I had to give the kid his due; at his age, admitting the fact that you were scared wasn't easy. "Good. I'd be worried about you if you weren't scared."

That caught the kid's attention, and he shot me a wide-eyed look of surprise. "What?"

"Come on kid, with everything that's getting tossed at you, you'd have to be pretty crazy not to be scared. I mean, it's a pretty crazy situation all around, and you just got dumped straight into it."

I could tell I had the kid's interest, but I hadn't quite won him over yet. I leaned in close, and dropped my voice a bit, even though the two of us were completely alone out here. "Want to know a secret? Most of the time we get into a combat situation, I'm scared out of my wits. Why do you think I always tell so many bad jokes?" Like most of my bad jokes, that one got a weak, half-hearted laugh out of the intended audience. "Nothing wrong with being scared kid; that's just your body's way of telling you that you're in the middle of a bunch of craziness that could get you hurt or killed."

"But I'm a coward…"

"Why? Because you're scared when you're in the middle of fight? Stars and stones kid, I just told you I'm freaking terrified half the time I'm in a tussle with some nasty supernatural critter. I'd bet if you asked Misato, she'd tell you that she was scared out of her wits half the time she was in combat too. Hell, even Rei gets scared, she just doesn't show it. If you're a coward, then so are all of us."

I could see the kid wavering. "Look, Shinji, it's alright to be afraid. Doesn't make you a coward, it just means you're sane. I won't blame you for a second if you decide you don't want to be a pilot, and neither will Misato. We'll support you no matter what decision you make, but at the end of the day it is your choice, and you have to decide what you want to do with your life."

I paused for a moment, and thought things over. Yeah, the kid had a choice to make but he didn't know the whole score. Nerv liked to keep its secrets. I could understand the impulse; for a long time, I'd been a big believer in keeping potentially dangerous information out of the hands of anyone who didn't need to know it too. However, I'd been around the block a few times, and learned that isn't always that simple; sure, you could say that keeping the kid in the dark was for his own good, that he shouldn't be burdened with that knowledge. It sounded real convincing; there'd been a time when I'd been a big believer in that kind of thing. Then I'd seen people get hurt or even killed because I'd decided to keep things from them for their own good.

Sometimes ignorance is just as dangerous as knowledge.

Yeah, Shinji had to choose for himself whether he would pilot or not, but right now he wasn't making an informed decision. He needed to know what the stakes were. "Hey, Shinji, let's go for a little walk; something you need to see."

The kid obediently followed me back to main Nerv complex, and once the two of us got into one of the main elevators I punched a few buttons and ran my security card through the reader. Then I had to run it through the reader a couple more times before it actually worked. Nerv renewed people's security cards often enough that mine usually didn't get messed up by being around me before it was time to replace it, but this one was getting close to the end of its two-week lifespan, and I had summoned a powerful Fae and thrown some serious mojo around earlier.

On the ride down, I looked over at Shinji. "How much do you know about the Second Impact?"

Sure enough, the kid only knew the official line about how a meteor hit Antarctica. Time to fix that. "Well, the official story is a lie. Second Impact was caused by the Angels. Back around 2000, a bunch of scientists discovered a Geofront down in Antarctica, and in the middle of it they found the First Angel, Adam. Nobody's quite sure what went wrong, but my guess is that some of scientists thought it would be a good idea to try poking it with a stick to see what would happen, and it wound up waking up Adam and setting off the Second Impact."

The elevator finally reached Terminal Dogma, the very bottom floor of Nerv HQ. I walked up to the final set of security doors, and ran my card through again; this time, I got lucky and it worked on the first try. I couldn't help but wonder if the kid had figured out what he was about to see. The huge security doors took their time opening; this was probably the heaviest, thickest, and most secure door on the face of the planet after all.

Once the doors finally opened, the kid's eyes went wide with shock as he stared at the massive white figured that had been crucified over the lake of LCL slowly bleeding down from its severed legs. The entire lake itself was surrounded by what was probably one of the biggest magic circles on the planet; it wasn't particularly elaborate, but the circle wasn't there to contain or block out anything; it was just there to keep out anything magical. Shinji stared at the creature hanging from the cross. "Is that an Eva?"

I was a bit surprised by Shinji's guess, but then considering the fact that Unit 01 had been manufacture using the currently missing chunks of the Angel, his guess wasn't that far off. "No. This is the Second Angel, Lilith."

I ignored Lash's annoyed growling at the mention of Second Angel's name; hearing Lilith categorized as an Angel annoyed the hell out of her, since the real Lilith was the heaviest hitter in the Down-Below who wasn't a Fallen. From what I'd gathered, the internal politics of Hell were complicated; the Fallen might be the top dogs, but they were far from the only inhabitants of Hell, and the various factions in Hell probably spent as much time fighting each other as they did doing anything else. Apparently, Lasciel had a habit of tossing her lot in with Lilith's faction, so Lash took this one a little personally.

"The Second Angel?" Shinji asked, oblivious to the fact that I was busy tuning out an annoyed shadow-of-a-Fallen who was currently indulging in her umpteenth rant about the Second Angel's name.

"Yeah. If any of the Angels makes it down here, it'll set off the Third Impact. We've done a lot of rebuilding since the Second Impact, but humanity is still in a pretty delicate position. If there's a Third Impact, it might just tip us over the edge, and the whole planet will wind up being run by a bunch of damned dirty apes." I got a blank look from Shinji. "Statue of Liberty on the beach, Charlton Heston yelling at those maniacs for blowing it up and damning them all to hell?" Still nothing; guess he hadn't seen that movie. I would have to do something about that; kids need to be exposed to the classics.

Since my attempt at deflating the tension of the situation humor had fallen flat, I went back to serious. "Anyway, that's what's at stake here, Shinji. We're not just sending you out to fight for giggles; if an Angel gets down here, it's all over. The only way we've found to stop these things is using the Evangelion. If an Angel ever gets past the Evangelions, we'll self-destruct headquarters, and try to take the Angel with us." I hesitated for a moment, but Shinji deserved to know the whole truth. "I've had a literal demon offering me all kind of power in exchange for my soul; if it comes down to it, I'll take that hellish power and turn it on the Angels before I let the Third impact happen."

I shot Shinji a deadly serious look. "I hope you understand why I'm telling you this. You deserve to know just what was at stake here before you decide whether or not you want to be a pilot. You deserve to know that Misato, and I, and everyone else at Nerv are just as dedicated as you are to fighting the Angels. You deserve to know that we're all ready to put our lives and souls on the line for this battle."

Shinji looked up at me, but averted his gaze before he met my eyes. "But … why me? I mean, I'm nobody special, and I'm really not cut out for all this fighting."

I was briefly tempted to lie and spare the kid another nasty revelation, but it'd be hypocritical as heck to go on and on about he deserved to know the truth, and then lie to his face two seconds later. "It's because of your mother."

Shinji stared at me in shock. "My mom?"

I nodded slowly. "I know you were there when it happened, but it was a long time ago and you were young. Do you remember what happened to her?"

Shinji ran a hand through his hair, rubbing his head, and very slowly said. "I know there was an accident where she worked, but…" Shinji frowned, and I could see sweat starting to bead on his forehead and his pupils dilating slightly.

At a guess, he must have repressed the memory. Small wonder, really; no kid that age would want to remember seeing their mother die. Mental magic had never been my forte, especially since most of it sat in a very grey area when it came to the White Council's laws, but Molly had a real talent for it, and I'd picked up some tricks just by virtue of training her, and what I wanted to do was pretty simple and harmless. I wasn't trying to break into Shinji's head or enthrall him to my will, just give his memory a tiny little nudge. I gathered a tiny portion of my will, and very gently extended it in Shinji's direction. "Commemini."

Shinji's eyes shot wide open, and I barely managed to catch him before his legs collapsed out from under him. "I knew. I knew about the Evangelion. And mom – I knew she was in there, that's why being in it is always reminded me of her, but I never – I didn't…" The kid was breathing so heavily that he looked like he was close to hyperventilating, and I didn't have a paper bag handy. For lack of better options, I dunked his head into the nearby lake of LCL; between the shock of getting his head dunked into a liquid and the fact that LCL tended to be a bit harder to hyperventilate on than air, Shinji got his breathing under control, and after a bit I let him back up.

Crap. Shinji wasn't handling all of this very well; maybe letting him know the whole truth had been a bad idea. Sure, he had a right to know the truth, especially when he had a big decision like whether or not he wanted to pilot the Evangelion, but I'd hit him with too much, too fast. I would have liked to give him enough time to take all this in, but if he was going to participate in Operation Yashima, he needed to make a decision pretty quickly. "Look, Shinji, if you need some time to think all this over, it's fine, but right now we've got an Angel to deal with. We can deal with the big picture later. Do you think you're up for participating in this fight?"

Shinji hesitated, and wiped some LCL-drenched hair out of his eyes. "I don't know – I mean, everything…" Shinji went silent for a bit, and then burst out. "I got hurt and nearly died, and then all this – it's too much! How am I supposed to deal with all of this!"

"One thing at a time." I suggested. "Don't think about Evangelion, or Lilith, or what happened to your Mom. Don't worry about whether or not you want to pilot the Evangelion for the rest of the fight against the Angels. For now, just deal with what's right in front of you. Do you want to go out there, back Rei up, and protect her if something goes wrong?"

"Protect Ayanami?" Shinji frowned at me in confusion. The boy remained silent for a while, and his confusion and uncertainty slowly faded away, replaced by determination. "I don't want Ayanami to get hurt or die."

"Well, there's your answer then. If you want to go out there and protect her, then do it. You ask me, someone who decides to go out there and fight to protect another person isn't a coward, he's a goddamn hero."

Very slowly, Shinji nodded. "I'll do it. I'll pilot the Eva."


	16. Shinji III

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

I was on a train.

I'm not sure how I got on a train; the last thing I remember was deploying to fight the Fifth Angel, and then there was a whole lot of pain and everyone was screaming. I think I vaguely remember falling before I finally blacked out from the pain

And then I woke up on the train. It looked like an ordinary subway train, the type I'd seen all the time when I'd lived with my senseis before I moved to Tokyo-3, where the trains were ultra-modern. As far as I could tell, there was nobody else on the train; just me, alone on the weird empty subway cart.

Nothing to look at but an ordinary subway train, no SDAT player to keep my mind occupied, nobody to talk to, nothing in there at all but me, all by myself. I'd had this dream once before, after the fight when I'd first arrived. I guess it made sense that I would have the same dream after getting knocked out in my Eva again. Or I guess, compared to everything else that had happened to me in the last month, having the same weird dream every time I got knocked out made sense. Well, it wasn't completely the same. Last time, I'd heard someone else in my dream, just talking, but what they said didn't make any sense to me.

Since there wasn't anything else for me to do while I waited for this weird dream to end, pretty soon I started thinking about things. The only reason I'd even become a pilot was because Ayanami had gotten hurt. Why was I still piloting now that she had gotten better? Now that she could pilot again and her Eva was working they didn't need me anymore. Ayanami would be a far better pilot than I could ever manage. After all, she didn't hate piloting the Evas like I did. She wasn't scared of her Eva like I was.

So why was I still here?

When I'd first come to Tokyo-3, I'd hoped that I might finally be able to have some kind of connection with my father. I knew that was stupid, no matter how much I'd hoped it might happen, Father wasn't going to just call me to Tokyo-3 one day and suddenly start acting like a father should. After I'd started piloting the Eva though, I'd hoped that maybe if I did a good enough job he would finally notice me. Maybe if I did a good enough job helping him with his work, he would finally acknowledge me.

"You hate your father." I looked up, and Ayanami was there. When had she come in? How had she come in? Wait, this was my dream, so I must have just been dreaming about her too. At least she wasn't – well, after what had happened at her apartment I'd been worried that I might start having more of those kinds of dreams about her. There was still this nasty little part of me that remembered everything about how she had looked and felt. A sick little part of me had actually enjoyed what had happened, the things I'd seen and done to her. I'm such a pervert.

Ayanami just stared at me silently, and when I didn't say anything she spoke again. "I do not understand. You hate your father for abandoning you. Why do you still seek his approval if you hate him?"

"Because – because I –" I struggled to think of some way to explain it. "I guess it's just that despite everything he's done, he's still my father. Yes, he's cruel and heartless to me, and he treats me so coldly but I guess I'll never be able to completely stop hoping that one day he'll stop being such a bad father. I know it's not realistic and that I should just hate him and not care what he thinks or wants from me, but I can't just forget that he's my father. Maybe – maybe if I do a good enough job as a pilot, he'll finally realize how wrong he's been to ignore me all these years, and we'll finally be able to act like a family."

"That does not seem a likely outcome." Ayanami stated flatly.

"Yeah, I know." I sighed. "I'm weak. Useless. A coward. I know it. You know it. Everyone knows it." I slumped down into my seat. "Father knows it. I'm useless to him; that's why he abandoned me. That's why he'll never acknowledge me, or treat me like his son. No matter how hard I try, I'll never be good enough for him. If I do well at piloting the Eva, then I'm just doing what he expects of me. I f I mess it up, then he'll hate me. Actually doing well enough to impress him, to make him praise me – that's just a dream, it'd never really happen. He doesn't care. He'll never care. I guess I don't deserve to have anyone care about me anyway, so I guess it's alright."

"Why do you find it acceptable for nobody to care about you?" Ayanami asked.

"Why should they?" I snapped at her. I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised when my tone didn't get any sort of reaction out Ayanami. "I mean, my own father realizes how contemptible I am, and he would know me better than anyone else, wouldn't he? And lots of other people hate me too, because they know. They know I'm weak, pathetic, a coward. People hate me because I deserve to be hated."

"Your father's perspective is flawed, as is yours." Ayanami countered. "Harry and Misato do not hate you. Toji and Kensuke do not hate you. I told you earlier today that I do not hate you."

"None of them would know me as well as my own father would!"

"Why? Your contact with your father has been minimal. Why would he understand you more than the people who actually spend time with you?"

"B – Because he's my father!" I practically shouted at her. "A parent understands their own child better than anyone else possibly could!"

"Did your mother hate you?" Ayanami asked calmly.

"What?"

"If a parent's perspective is superior, then it would only be sensible to consider the opinion of your other parent, yes? Do you believe that your mother hated you, Pilot Ikari?"

I thought about it for a second. I don't really remember Mom, I'd been too young when she died, but every once in a while I ran into something that vaguely reminded me of her. Things that had an odd sense of, well, Mom-ness to them. I didn't know for sure, but I'd always had this feeling; it didn't really make sense, and I couldn't explain or justify it, but, some part of me had always felt that… "No, I don't think my mom hated me. I think – I think she loved me, and wanted me to be safe and happy."

I blinked, and when I opened my eyes everything was a bit blurry, but I could tell I wasn't on the train any more. Instead, I was in bed, looking up at the ceiling. I'd seen this ceiling before. I was back in the hospital again, just like last time I'd been hurt piloting the Eva. I looked to the side, and saw an achingly familiar face sitting beside my bed. "Mom?"

I blinked and rubbed my eyes, and when I looked again my mother wasn't there anymore, and instead it was Ayanami. I could see a book in her hands, and she'd obviously been reading it until I woke up; had she been sitting by my bed, waiting for me to wake up the entire time? Now she was just looking at me, and there was something off about her expression. I couldn't really say what it was, but the look on her face was just a little different from normal in some way I couldn't quite figure out. "Ayanami?"

"Yes." Ayanami's voice was even quieter than usual, and after a moment that weird expression on her face went away.

"Um – how long have you been here, waiting for me to wake up?"

Ayanami marked her page and closed the book, and then looked over at the clock on the wall. "I have been here for seventy-one minutes."

"Oh." She'd been waiting for me for over an hour? Why? I mean, after what happened earlier today, why would she want to spend that much time waiting at the hospital for me to wake up? I sat up in the bed, and tried to think of what I should say. "Thanks for – um – being here and, well..." I trailed off, uncertain what I should say.

"I was ordered to provide you with a meal and fresh clothing once you woke." Ayanami placed a new pluguit on the foot of my bed, and indicated a covered tray of food waiting on the end table next to my bed.

"Oh. Thanks, Ayanami." I guess that explained why she was here. It wasn't because she'd been worried about my health or anything crazy like that; she was only here because someone had ordered her to be here. I guess I should've known it was something like that. Why would she care about me? "I'm not very hungry right now, though."

"I think you should eat." Ayanami said, very quietly.

I flinched a bit as I realized how inconsiderate I'd been; she'd gone to all the trouble of bringing food for me, and then I'd told her I didn't want it. I hadn't meant to be so rude to her. "Sorry, Ayanami. Thanks for bringing me something to eat."

Ayanami just looked at me for a bit, and then continued as if I hadn't said anything. "I was also sent here to brief you on the current mission plan for Operation Yashima."

"Operation Yashima?" I could feel the dread gathering in the pit of my stomach. "They expect me to get back into the Eva again? After what just happened? I've never been so scared in my life. I nearly died!"

"You were in a state of cardiac arrest for less than a minute; it would take at least four minutes to begin causing serious or permanent damage to your health." Wait, did she just say that my heart had actually stopped beating for a while? "Your spinal injuries are also not currently life-threatening, and according to Magi's calculations there is only 3.68% chance that you will suffer permanent harm from participating in the battle if the appropriate precautions are taken and the mission goes according to plan." Wait, my spine had been damaged too? Was I going to end up crippled?

I took several deep breaths, and tried to calm down a bit. I don't think I did a very good job. Ayanami stared at me for a while, and the said. "You are still scared of your Evangelion?"

"Yes." I said, very quietly. "After what happened, I think I'm even more scared of it than I was before."

"I see. You do not wish to participate in this operation, correct?"

"No, I don't."

Ayanami was quiet for a bit, and then spoke once more. "Then you will not be a part of Operation Yashima. Your role in the current mission plan is to serve as secondary support. It is unnecessary; I can accomplish the mission objectives on my own." The girl stood up, and started walking towards the door. As the door opened, and she was about to step out into the hallway, she said one final thing. "Goodbye, Pilot Ikari."

"Ayanami, wait!" I sprang out of the bed, and ran up to her; I guess I was lucky, since she stayed in the doorway after I asked her to wait. "Are you sure you'll be alright without me as part of the mission? I don't want to pilot the Eva, but – but if it's really important, well…"

"It is not." Ayanami answered flatly. "The role you would play in Operation Yashima is not significant enough to justify compelling you to participate unwillingly."

"Oh. Alright then." I slumped down and let out a relieved breath. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I was glad to hear that Ayanami would be able to do the mission without me. "Um – do your best, Ayanami."

Ayanami looked at me, and very slightly nodded. Then she turned around, and was about to leave when she said. "You should eat your food and dress before leaving your room."

"Huh?" I suddenly realized that ever since I'd gotten out of the bed I had been standing in front of Ayanami completely naked. I guess the doctors must have taken my plugsuit off at some point after I got to the hospital. No wonder she brought me a new one. I let out a strangled gasp, and quickly scrambled over to the bed to grab the sheets and use them to cover myself. "Sorry! I'm really sorry! I didn't know – I didn't mean to – sorry!" Once I was covered up, I let out a very weak chuckle as the absurdity of the entire situation struck me. "I – I guess this makes us even now, right Ayanami?"

"Even?" Ayanami stared at me for a bit, and then slowly nodded. "You speak of the day you arrived at Nerv. I understand."

I hadn't thought of it that way, but I guess she was going out to pilot while I was hurt, just like I did for her on the day I came to Tokyo-3. Of course, that hadn't been what I'd meant, but explaining that to her would have required mentioning that we'd both seen each other naked, which was such a horribly embarrassing thought that I'm pretty sure just thinking it was turning me red as a tomato.

"You appear flushed, Pilot Ikari." Ayanami noted, her voice still utterly detached. "You should rest. Be sure to eat your meal." Before I could say anything else, Ayanami walked out the door.

* * *

The worst part about waiting is the fact that you have nothing else to do but think. Sometimes I don't mind having a bit of time to mull things over, but with all the craziness I'd been through in the last few hours, the last thing I wanted was to be alone with my thoughts. In a strange way, I was almost looking forward to getting back into the Eva; at least being terrified for my life, health, and sanity would keep me too busy to think about anything else.

It was weird; you'd think after everything I'd learned from Harry, I'd be worried about the fact that we had an Angel trapped in Nerv's basement, or what happened to my mother. Instead, as I sat in the locker room at the secondary base in Matsushiro, waiting for them to finish configuring Unit 00 to accept me as a pilot, I couldn't get my mind off that conversation with Ayanami. Maybe it was because thinking about anything was just too hard right now. Ayanami had told me that I wasn't going to be doing anything important during the battle, but then I'd learned from Harry that I was supposed to be protecting her.

Why would she say that wasn't important, and it didn't matter if I participated in the mission or not? Well, I guess I was just her backup; if everything went according to plan, Ayanami would shoot the Angel down and I wouldn't actually have to do anything. Then again, whenever I'd been piloting the Eva, things had never gone according to plan; the Fourth Angel should've died when I shot it, and the Fifth shouldn't have been able to shoot me before my Eva was even done deploying. But then, I wasn't a very good Eva pilot, so maybe things would work according to plan now that Ayanami was piloting instead of me. But still – if it had been me, I would've wanted to have someone there to protect me, just in case something went wrong.

It was probably my fault that she told me I didn't need to participate in the mission. Maybe it was that joke I'd made about how we were even now; she must have decided that I was trying to make her think she owed me for what I did the first time I ever piloted an Eva. It was a stupid thing for me to say; it's not like I'd taken her place as a pilot for any noble reason. Well, alright, I didn't want to see her get hurt, and that was one of the reasons I'd volunteered, but it was probably mostly because I'd been afraid that if she could pilot I wouldn't be needed at all.

And now – now I knew I wasn't needed. Operation Yashima could go ahead without me; even if having me there was useful, my participation wasn't really necessary. But I was still sitting here in the locker room, waiting for them to get Unit 00 ready so I could pilot it. Because I'd made a decision that I wanted to pilot the Eva this time, and I wasn't going to let anything happen to Ayanami. I was definitely going to protect her.

I wasn't the right kind of person to be an Eva pilot. Eva pilots needed to be the kind of people who could face impossible odds and then go beyond the impossible and win anyway. Eva pilots needed to be the kind of people who weren't afraid of their own Evas, let alone the things they needed to fight. Eva pilots needed to be experts with a lifetime of training, not scared weaklings who barely had any idea what they were doing. I wasn't the right kind of person to be an Eva pilot; I'd known that ever since I got to Tokyo-3. The only reason I'd ever become an Eva pilot was because of what happened with my mother, and because Ayanami had been injured. I wasn't qualified. I wasn't trained. I wasn't ready. You probably couldn't have found a worse person to make into an Eva pilot.

And despite all of that, I was still going to get into the Eva, and try to protect Ayanami. I might not be the sort of person who should be piloting an Eva, but –

Well…

Maybe I could still be a good enough pilot to keep her alive. I wasn't a hero, and I wasn't brave, or skilled, but that didn't mean I couldn't go out that and try to keep her safe. And if I could do that, if I could make the decision to protect Ayanami, and then accomplish my goal…

Well, that had to mean something, right?

I shifted uncomfortable on the locker room's bench. The entire suit felt weird and uncomfortable because of the stiff padding they'd added to the back of my suit to keep me from hurting my spine any more. The strange thing was, I couldn't even tell I was hurt; I mean, my back felt a little stiff and sore, but not bad or anything. I probably wouldn't have even noticed it if I hadn't been paying attention and looking for it because I knew my back was hurt. Right now, I was a lot more annoyed by the fact that my plugsuit pretty much forced me to sit up perfectly straight than by anything actually happening with my back. That doesn't seem right to me; if I was injured, I should feel injured.

I looked up at the clock. We only had about fifteen minutes until midnight. I know getting Unit 01 set up for Ayanami and Unit 00 set up for me had taken some extra time, and the changes to my plugsuit had probably slowed things down too, and since I was on backup getting Unit 01 and the positron rifle working were both more important than me, but if the operation was supposed to start at midnight we were getting close to running out of time. Sure enough, less than a minute later I heard Misato's voice over the speakers. "Shinji, we're ready for you now."

"Alright, Misato." I stiffly got up, and walked out into the cages. Well, they were still called the cages, even though the setup at Matsushiro was a bunch of scaffolding in the open air instead of the tight, much more actually cage-like arrangement they had back at the Geofront. People were still calling them the cages anyway though; I guess it was just force of habit. Plus, well, what else would we call the place where we kept the Evas?

I admit, I was a little nervous about getting into Unit 00. After all, the first time Ayanami tried to pilot it, she'd been pretty badly hurt. Sure, the problem was supposed to be fixed now, and she hadn't had any trouble the second time they'd activated Unit 00, but that was no guarantee that I wouldn't run into any problems. What if Unit 00 always tried to kill its pilot the first time it was activated with a new pilot? Sure, that would be a kind of weird thing for an Eva to do, but there was already a lot of weirdness surrounding the Evas.

As LCL flooded the entry plug, I was forcibly reminded of another bit of that weirdness. Breathing the LCL had been awkward and disgusting back when I had no idea what the stuff was; now that I knew I was breathing Angel blood, it was a lot worse. I gagged a bit when the LCL got up to the level of my head, but before long I was breathing it again, just like normal. With the entire entry plug full of the stuff, it's not like I had any choice about breathing it. Besides, I guess I'd gotten used to dealing with the LCL after having to breathe it every time I got into the Eva. I don't think breathing the LCL would ever stop being gross, but it was hard to still be quite so viscerally horrified by something I'd been doing for several hours pretty much every day after I'd moved to Tokyo-3.

"Shinji?" I instinctively looked up when I heard Lt. Ibuki's voice, even though I knew I was alone in the entry plug and there no video feeds running. "Sempai's busy configuring the positron rifle, so I'll be supervising the activation of Unit 00. Any problems so far? Your plugsuit has limited medical functions, so if your back is causing you any pain I can administer medication from here."

"I'm alright." Well, it was a little sore, but nothing worth bothering someone else about.

"Good. Let me know if there are any problems; nobody wants you getting hurt." If nobody wanted me to get hurt, they shouldn't be putting me back in the Eva and throwing me back into battle. I guess I shouldn't blame Lt. Ibuki though; after all, I'd decided to go on the mission, and she was just doing her job. Plus, she sounded kind of uncomfortable with the mission as it was. "Anyway, what do you think of Unit 00?"

"It's…" I tried to find the right word but couldn't really come up with anything, so I settled on, "It's weird."

"Any problems?"

"No, nothing's wrong, it's just – well – I guess it kinda smells like Ayanami." That sounded a lot weirder when I said it out loud than it had in my head. I hope they didn't think I was some kind of pervert of something.

I didn't hear anything from Lt. Ibuki or anyone else at the control center for a bit, and the next transmission I got was from Misato. "Funny thing Shinji; when we asked Rei what she thought about getting into Unit 01, she said it smelled like you." Oh. Well I guess that makes sense; if Ayanami's Eva smelled like her, mine should smell like me. Well, maybe smell wasn't the right word exactly; it was just, the whole Eva had a feeling of – Ayanami-ness to it. Like it was her place, and I didn't belong here.

I should've realized Misato wasn't about to pass up another chance to tease me. "What exactly have you two been up to lately, Shinji? I can't even imagine what you two must have been doing in order to get so very familiar with each other's smells…"

"Cut it out, Misato." I wish I'd sounded a bit less whiny when I said that.

"But teasing you is so much fun!" Misato laughed over the comm. "Besides, it's good for you. A bit of humor is a great way to help deal with stressful situations."

"You're not teasing me because it'll help me feel less stressed; you're doing it because you think embarrassing me is funny."

"Well it is funny, and I know I feel less stressed now. With as easy as it is to get a rise out of you, teasing you is a ton of fun."

"Sempai says you're the same way, Colonel Katsuragi." A second later, Maya added very quietly. "I probably shouldn't have said that out loud."

"No, please, go on Lieutenant." Even though the connection was sound-only, I didn't need to see Misato's fake smile and twitching eyebrow to know they were there.

"Are you really that easy to tease Misato?" Now that I thought about it, the one time I tried actually teasing her back a bit, I did seem to get under her skin pretty quickly. "You know, I had been wondering, in every movie I've ever seen, military people are supposed to keep their homes really neat and orderly. So why are you such a slob?"

"Shut up." Misato growled.

"Sempai says her cooking is terrible too." Lt. Ibuki chimed in, apparently deciding that if I could tease Misato so could she

"Sometimes Pen Pen won't even eat the leftovers." I confided.

"You know Lt. Ibuki, Bethany Base needs some more technical staff." Misato casually mentioned. "And as for you, Shinji, you live in my apartment. I'm not saying that I could easily kill you and make it look like an accident if you don't stop teasing me right now, but…"

"Actually, you just did say that." I deadpanned.

"Technically, I'm not in your chain of command, ma'am." Maya added cheerfully. "Any reassignment orders would have to be approved by sempai." Misato's reaction to our lack of terror at her threats was to say something very unladylike. "So Shinji, do you feel less nervous now?"

I was a bit surprised to find that I did; poking fun at my guardian had been a nice distraction from everything. "Yeah, I do. I guess you were right Misato; a bit of teasing is a great way to relieve stress."

Apparently, Misato had picked up some very rude foreign terms during her time in the army. I recognized some of the words of English, and knew they were not very nice things to say to another person, but I didn't even recognize some of the languages she was using, though I'm pretty sure there was some German in there as well. I hadn't meant to upset her that much. "Sorry Misato, I was just – well, I didn't mean to…"

"It's fine Shinji." Misato still sounded a bit annoyed, but she was trying to hide it. "I suppose if I'm going to tease you then you're allowed to tease back. Anyway, let's get started." Misato cleared her throat, and then said one last thing. "Look Shinji, I just want to let you know that no matter happens, I appreciate the fact you got back into the Eva after everything that's happened."

"Um…" I wasn't quite sure what to say; I wasn't used to hearing things like that. "Thanks, Misato."

The activation went pretty much exactly like normal at first. I could feel the first tingles of synchronization starting; the feeling was a bit muffled compared to how it felt when I synched with Unit 01, but I guess that made sense; Unit 00 wasn't my Eva after all. Unit 00 didn't have mother –No, no time to think about that right now. Focus on the mission. Focus on protecting Ayanami. Everything else would have to wait.

That was when I felt it. It was an odd sense of pressure against my forehead, like there was something trying to get into my skull – or maybe my mind? It felt like Ayanami. Well, it mostly felt like Ayanami, but not quite. There was something different about this presence. It was Ayanami, but not exactly.

Maybe it was Ayanami's mom? My mother was in my Eva, and Harry told me that the same was true of the Second Child's Eva, so I guess it would make sense that her mother would be in her Eva too. And that would explain why the presence seemed o much like Ayanami, but just a bit different. I realized I didn't even know anything about Ayanami's parents; I mean, since she was living by herself and didn't have any family I guess she must have been an orphan. Between the Third Impact and all the trouble that came afterwards, there were a lot of orphans.

"Um…" I did a quick check to make sure I wasn't transmitting to the control box. "Ayanami's mom?" I felt the presence withdraw just a tiny bit. "I – I know I'm not Ayanami, but I need to pilot the Eva right now, because if I don't Ayanami could get hurt, and I don't want anything to happen to her. So please – please let me be the pilot. I promised I'd protect her."

I felt the presence withdraw completely, and the rest of the Eva's activation process went as normal. I guess Ayanami's mom decided that it was alright for me to pilot the Eva, since it was just this one time and I was doing it protect her daughter. A few seconds later I felt my perceptions of the Eva grow a bit sharper, and Lt. Ibuki said that my sychro ratio had gone up by a couple of points.

I grabbed the shield that I was going to use the block the Fifth Angel's blast if it got a chance to shoot at us. Hopefully, nothing would happen; the plan was to shoot the Angel and kill it with one shot before it even knew we were there, after all. Even if it did get a chance to shoot at us, they'd picked a location where the angle would make it difficult for the Angel to shoot back; something about how the positrons didn't move in a straight line, so we could shoot at a bit of angle, while the Angel's attack did go straight, so it couldn't hit us directly because a mountain was in the way. I didn't really understand all the science behind it, but anything that helped us had to be good.

Unit 01 was already in position at the positron rifle. I thought about saying something to Ayanami before the start of the mission, but there wasn't much time, and I didn't want to distract or bother her; she was probably concentrating on what she had to do. I could hear a whole lot of background chatter from everyone getting the positron rifle ready to shoot, but after trying to follow it for a bit I just gave up and tried to tune it out. I didn't understand half of it, and if anything went seriously wrong Misato or Dr. Akagi would tell me.

After I'd been in position for about a minute or so, the ground-based weapons around Tokyo-3 started firing at the Angel. The way the Angel normally kept its core hidden somewhere within its main body meant we had to force it to shapeshift into one of its attack mode before Ayanami could shoot it. We had to destroy the core with one shot, and that would be impossible if we didn't even know for sure where the core was.

The sheer number of missiles and guns shooting at the Angel was almost awe-inspiring; even though it was midnight and the nation-wide blackout put out all the usual nighttime lights, you could see pretty clearly just by the light of all the missile trails, tracer rounds, and explosions. None of it had the slightest effect on the Angel though. It seemed wrong somehow; it was incredibly unfair that despite all the effort we put into it, the massive scale of the firepower all the conventional forces were bringing to bear, it didn't even put the slightest scratch on the Angel.

Then the Fifth Angels started its counter-attack, lashing out with the same laser it had used against me hours ago. The Angel's new targets didn't have an AT field to protect them though. Most of Tokyo-3's defense systems were automated, but there were probably still people dying. Nerv was spending billions of yen, and sacrificing the lives of soldiers, just to distract the Angel for a few seconds, and give Rei a chance to destroy it. And if she missed her shot, the entire human race would die. That was – well, I'm glad that I wasn't the one who had to deal with all of that pressure, because I know I'd be terrified of messing up. All I had to do was protect Ayanami if things went wrong, and make sure she had a chance to take that shot. One more sacrifice, just to give her a chance of seizing a victory.

"Rei, the cannon is fully charged." Misato announced "Fire as soon as you have a clear shot!"

"Yes." A couple seconds later, Ayanami fired. The energy blast from the positron rifle was – well it was every bit as big as the Fifth Angel's weapon. Rei's shot was perfect, cutting through the AT field, slicing right through the center of the Angel and perfectly hitting its core. The Angel let out a shriek of pain so loud we could hear it clearly all the way from Matsushiro. The Angel's form shifted into a giant spikey ball, and I could see blood pouring through the hole where Ayanami shot it.

"Great shot, Ayanami!" I transmitted to the other pilot. I admit, I was pretty relieved that everything had actually gone according to plan for once. I might have decided that I was willing to risk my life to help Ayanami kill this Angel and save everyone else, but I was hardly going to complain if things worked out so that I didn't have to get shot again. "You got it!"

"No," Ayanami sent back. "I failed. The core was not destroyed."

"What? But –" I looked again, and I could see the hole where Ayanami shot the Angel slowly sealing back shut. Within seconds, the Angel was back in its original diamond –shaped form, as if nothing had happened at all.

"What happened?" Misato demanded. "That shot was perfect! There's no way we could have missed!"

"We're getting a high energy reading from the target!" Lt. Ibuki announced "It's about to fire!"

"Everyone, brace for impact!"

I rushed to get my Eva between Ayanami and the Fifth Angel, but when the attack came I didn't feel any of the burning heat or agonizing pain that came the last time I'd been hit by the Fifth Angel's attack. Instead, the ground shook like we were getting hit with a huge earthquake, and I wound up losing my balance and sending unit 00 tumbling to the ground.

No. That wasn't supposed to happen! I was supposed to protect Ayanami, and instead I'd fallen down and left her completely exposed!

I quickly scrambled upright, and desperately looked for her and Unit 01. I let out a huge sigh of relief when I saw her, still in position next to the positron rifle. It looked like the Angel hadn't managed to score a direct hit on us this time "Ayanami! Are you hurt?"

"I am unharmed."

I let out another sigh of relief. For a few terrible seconds, I'd been afraid that I'd horribly messed things up. I had to protect her. The entire mission, the survival of Misato and Harry and Toji and Kensuke everyone else, all of it depended on me keeping her safe long enough for her to beat the Fifth Angel. More than that, I just – it felt right somehow, that I should be protecting her.

"What's the status of the power system and rifle?" Misato asked. "Can we fire again?"

"The power system is still up and running." Lt. Hyuga said. "It's already starting to recharge; it should be ready to fire again in about thirty seconds."

"The cannon has taken minor damage." Lt. Ibuki declared. "It looks like it should still be functional, but I can't be completely sure we'll get another shot out of it."

"Well, we don't have much choice but to try it and see what happens." Then Misato turned her attention to the Evas. "Shinji, Rei, are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine Misato." Ayanami said that she was alright too. "What happened?" I asked. "I thought – well, when it shot at us I thought we were –"

"It looks like that mountain took the worst of it, we just got caught on the edges." I looked over at the mountain we'd been hoping would block the Fifth Angel's line of fire if it got a chance to counterattack. More than half of it was gone.

That – that was bad. That thing had just destroyed most of a mountain with a single shot! And I was supposed to jump in front of its next attack! Worse, I had volunteered to do that! What had I been thinking? We'd missed our one chance at destroying the Fifth Angel before it knew we were there, and now there was no way to stop it from killing us and destroying anything that got in its way. This thing could blow up mountains! I don't want to be a coward, but given the choice between jumping in front of a mountain-destroying laser or running away, running away sounded like the sensible thing to do.

"The Angel's energy levels are rising again!" Lt. Ibuki sounded worried too, so at least I wasn't the only one terrified at the prospect of being shot at by a mountain destroying laser. Seconds later, the Angel fired again.

When I looked, I barely make out the shadowy form of what was left of the mountain as it slowly disintegrated under the force of the Fifth Angel's attack. I would have to be crazy to jump in front of something like that. Yeah, if I'd been some sort of legendary hero or something I wouldn't hesitate to place myself in harm's way. That's what Ayanami needed right now; a hero. All she had was me, a useless little coward.

I'm not a hero. I'll never be a hero. I'm just not that kind of guy.

The mountain was almost gone. There were still more than twenty seconds left before the positron rifle could fire again. Ayanami was going to die. Misato and Harry and everyone else, all of them were going to die.

I'm not a hero.

But maybe, just for today, I could pretend I was.

Even with the shield taking the brunt of the Angel's blast, it still felt like my entire body was on fire. It didn't hurt as much as I'd expected it to. Don't get me wrong, it hurt. A lot. But it didn't hurt nearly as much as the last time I'd gotten hit by the Fifth Angel's energy weapon. Maybe it was because of my lower synchronization ratio with Unit 00. Or maybe it was because I was ready for it this time, instead of terrified and confused. Maybe, because I made the decision to put myself here, I could handle the pain.

I chanced a quick look back at Unit 01 and the positron rifle. Both of them were still fine. The entire world around us was on fire, but behind me there was a tiny safe zone created by the shield and my Eva.

The shield was already melting and starting fall apart. Hadn't Dr. Akagi said the shield would last seventeen seconds? How long had it been? How soon would the rifle be able to fire? Wait – the shield would only last seventeen seconds, and when the Angel attacked there had been a bit over twenty seconds left before the cannon could fire again. That – that wasn't good.

By now the shield was little more than a large chunk of semi-molten metal, and I could feel Unit 00 taking more and more of the blast directly. I grit my teeth against the pain, turned the AT field up to its strongest setting, and held my ground, shielding Unit 01 with my body. I had to buy enough time for Ayanami to get another shot off, no matter what it took.

Besides, it was too late run anyway.

I could hear radio chatter in the background from Misato and everyone else, but it was all coming out garbled, and a bit later it stopped completely. Even if the transmissions had been clear, I was probably in too much pain to understand what they were saying anyway. A second later the entry plug plunged into blackness; the Eva's eyes must have been knocked out. No sound, no sight, just me, alone in the dark, and in agonizing pain.

I don't know how long I was like that. I know it must have only been a few seconds, but at the time it felt like an eternity. Eventually, I realized that the pain wasn't there anymore; my body still ached and trembled with remembered agony, but there was no more pain. The Angel must have stopped. Did Ayanami get it? Or had the Angel gotten past me and killed her. Was it about to kill everyone else too?

I tried to connect with Unit 00, to come up with some way to find out what was going on, but I couldn't get any more than the slightest twitch out of the damaged Eva, and even that tiny bit of synchronization flooded my body with a litany of new pains. I'd ruined Ayanami's Eva; pretty much everything was in bad shape, and the Eva itself could barely even move. If the Angel had won, there was nothing I could do about it now.

Eventually, I felt an odd sense of gravity shifting around within the entry plug. Something outside must be moving the Eva around. That was probably good, right? If something was moving the Eva, it must be Misato and the other Nerv people trying to get me out. If the Angel thought I was still alive, it would probably just blast me again.

A few seconds later, I felt the weak, lingering connection to Unit 00 end, and then the LCL began draining out of my entry plug. I let out a deep breath, LCL spilling down the front of my plugsuit. I was right; whoever was out there was getting me out of the Eva. I guess we'd won.

A minute later, the hatch to my entry plug opened, and a man I vaguely recognized as being part of the medical staff climbed in. "Pilot Ikari? Are you alright?"

"Um – I think so." I felt completely exhausted and was sore just about everywhere, but as far as I could tell there wasn't anything seriously wrong with me.

"No pain or discomfort in your back?" The man asked, pulling out a small flashlight and checking me over.

"No more than anywhere else. I'm kinda sore all over."

The man asked about a dozen more questions, and checked every inch of body for injuries before he seemed satisfied that I wasn't about to die. "I don't see any problems, though we're going to take you down to medical to run a few more tests just to make sure. We've got a wheelchair waiting for you outside; think you can make it there on your own?"

"Yeah, I think I can." I followed the medic out of the entry plug. There wasn't a whole lot of light outside, but compared to the nearly pitch black entry plug, it was still pretty bright, and I wound up stumbling as my eyes squinted down to nearly shut by reflex. Before I could fall, someone caught me.

I looked to see who it was, and my eyes met Ayanami's. I'd kind've expected it to be that medic guy, or maybe Misato, not her. At least if she was keeping me from falling down and embarrassing myself, that meant she was alright. "Ayanami? Are you alright?"

"I am uninjured." The girl answered her eyes still locked with mine. "The medic stated that you have not sustained any severe injuries."

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just glad you're alright." I'd done it. I'd kept her safe.

"I see." After a few seconds, Ayanami frowned, averted her eyes, and very quietly asked. "Ikari – why did you choose to pilot the Eva, even though you were free of any obligation to do so?"

"Um – I guess I piloted it because I wanted to."

"You said that you fear the Eva." Ayanami almost sounded confused. "Why would you wish to pilot it?"

"Well, piloting the Eva is really important, even if I don't like doing in. And I –" I hesitated for a bit, before admitting the next part. "I just didn't want to see you get hurt."

Ayanami looked surprised when I said that. "Why?"

"I don't know –" I admitted. "I just – I feel like I should protect you. It feels right."

Then Ayanami did something that really shocked me. She smiled.

* * *

**AN:** And that's the Ramiel fight done. Also, since it's probably remiss of me to not mention it sooner, thanks to the folks at DLP for generally helping me hammer out the flaws in any given chapter before I toss them up here.


	17. Harry XIV

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

By the time I knocked on the door to Rei's apartment I was getting into a serious state of righteous wrath.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Gendo just shoved her into a cheap dump like this building. After all, nobody else was living there, so securing the building wasn't that difficult, and Rei was not the type to be overly concerned about the trashiness of her building. Heck, Gendo might not even completely grasp how much of a craphole this place was; he was the kind of guy who only cared about strict necessities. To a man like Gendo, this trashy apartment had everything Rei needed to stay alive, which made it quite acceptable for his purposes. However, unlike Gendo I actually cared about Rei beyond the context of whether she was physically capable of piloting an Evangelion.

I knocked on Rei's door a bit harder than I really needed to; I guess my annoyance with her living conditions was getting the better of me. Well, the fact that I had to hold onto the pizza box with just one hand to knock on her door might have been a factor too. A few seconds later the door opened, and Rei stood in her doorway, patiently waiting for me to explain why I was there rapping on her chamber door.

"Hello Rei" Despite being annoyed by the condition of her apartment building, I forced some cheer into my voice. "I come bearing the greatest gift in the world; pizza." I nodded down at the pizza box. "Authentic Chicago deep dish, none of that thin-crusted Japanese pizza with all kinds of weird toppings." I'd had to give the 'Za Guard double their usual payment to actually bring me an intact pizza from Chicago, but the Little Folk came through for me, and now I could finally expose Rei to some proper pizza; it was important part of expanding her horizons. To be fair, some of those weird Japanese pizzas were pretty good, once you got over the whole 'these topping do not belong on pizza' factor. Still no match for good old Chicago-style though; I guess I'm a bit of a pizza snob. "Don't worry Rei, I remembered to get a pizza with no dead animals on half of it; just cheese and some veggies." Personally, I think you can't have a pizza without pepperoni and sausage on it, but to each their own, I suppose.

Rei nodded slightly, and opened the door the rest of the way before walking back into her apartment; a few seconds later I saw her come out of the kitchen, a pair of disposable paper plates in hand. Rei set the plates down, and then looked at me expectantly. I was about to ask for an invitation when I remembered that one of the first entries in the 'how to not get eaten by supernatural critters' guide I'd written for the normals at Nerv was to be very careful about explicitly inviting anybody into your home. You never know when a shapeshifting faerie might be wearing a friend's face and trying to sneak into your house in order smack you with some bad juju.

I gave a slight shrug, and stepped over the doorway; I hadn't been planning on doing any spellslinging while I ate pizza and chatted with Rei, so leaving a chunk of my power at the door wasn't a big deal. I got about two steps past her threshold, and then came to a complete stop in surprise. I backed up out of her apartment, and then entered again. "Rei, how long have you been living here?"

"Five years." The girl supplied. "I do not believe the First lived here before me."

That answer didn't surprise me as much as it should have. Thresholds are complicated things with a whole lot of little rules around them, but the short version is that a threshold builds around the whole concept that a home is your space, and nobody else's. There were bunches of things that could determine how strong a threshold was, but the three biggest factors were how many people lived there, how long it had been inhabited, and how separate the dwelling was from its surroundings. Tokyo-3 was a pretty bad place to live in when it came to thresholds, since aside from a few old family homes most people were living in relatively new apartment buildings. New buildings didn't have time to build up a decent threshold, and a thin apartment wall gave much less of a sense of separation and privacy than you would get from say, a nice little home with a fence around it.

I'd been expecting that the threshold over Rei's apartment wouldn't be all that strong; being a one-person dwelling and an apartment were both big strike against it. However, I'd still been expecting there to be a threshold of some sort, especially if she'd been living here for years. Her apartment having not even the slightest hint of a threshold was a bit of a surprise. The entire apartment had an almost palpable aura of apathy and neglect. This was not a home to Rei, it was just a place where she went when she didn't have any Nerv duties and didn't need to go to school.

I set the pizza down in the kitchen for lack of anywhere else to put it, and sat down on the only chair in her apartment to put my thoughts together. The idea had been running through my mind ever since I saw the state of her apartment building, but now I was absolutely sure of my decision. Nasty bare-necessity living conditions were bad enough, but now we had a genuine security risk on top of that. Living in a place with no threshold was pretty close to having a "free lunch" sign tacked over your head for every supernatural predator out there. Probably the only thing that had kept Rei from becoming somebody's nasty's meal years ago was the fact that anything with a lick of supernatural sense could tell she wasn't normal. Most supernatural predators tend to be fairly cautious when it comes to picking targets; there was no reason to pick a fight with some weird half-human creature with mysterious abilities when there three billion or so clueless and defenseless juicy humans to munch on.

"Get ready to pack your things Rei, this apartment just isn't good enough." Rei blinked. "I've got a spare bedroom I've just been using for storage, so you can move in with me." Very slowly, she nodded, turned around, and started walking over to the one rather cheap dresser that presumably held all her clothing.

"Wait." Rei stopped when I called out to her. "Priorities, grasshopper. We can pack up later, but every second we don't start eating that pizza's getting a little colder."

Fifteen seconds later, Rei was intently studying a slice of wonderfully warm and gooey pizza, seeming just a touch uncertain of whether it would be tasty or not. Obviously, she had never been exposed to a proper pizza before; yet another entry on the long list of unforgivable crimes committed by Gendo Ikari. After a few more seconds, Rei took a bite, and once she finished chewing declared. "It is good." Considering her general tendency to not say more than she had to, I'm pretty sure that was Rei-speak for 'This is the most delicious thing I've ever tasted in my life.'

Normally, the fact that Rei was busily devouring her share of the pizza with her usual precise efficiency would have made conversation difficult, but not being able to talk because your mouth is full of pizza is much less of an issue when you don't say much anyway. So I did most of the talking, while Rei answered by nodding, shaking her head, or on a few occasions giving a very brief verbal response in between bites of pizza. The crazy thing about Rei's eating is that she somehow manages to have perfect table manners, and she doesn't even seem to be eating that fast, yet somehow all of her food is still gone in five minutes. Her hands even somehow stayed perfectly clean, despite the fact that she was eating wonderfully greasy pizza, and there was not a single bit of cheese or tomato sauce out of place. She must be using her AT Field to pull that off, because there is no natural way to eat pizza that neatly.

I was about halfway through my share of the pizza (needless to say, Rei was already done with her portion) when I noticed the one part of her entire apartment that didn't look horribly neglected. Rei was using the top of her dresser as an end table, and I recognized the flowers, Burger King crown, and books right away. A lot of people probably would have been creeped out by the fact that she was saving all sorts of little mementos, but I knew Rei well enough to understand the reasons behind it. Gendo didn't exactly strike me as the kind of guy to show much in the way of affection, I wasn't even sure if he was capable of feeling that kind of thing since what happened to Yui. Odds were, I was the only person (with the recent exception of Shinji) to ever indicate that they actually gave a crap about her. It's not a big surprise that she would make a bit of a big deal about that.

Humans are social creatures. Rei might be more-or-less half-Angel, but she was also half-human. It figured that she would want those social connections. Gendo being the antisocial bastard that he was, he'd never really taken things like that into account.

Time to give Rei a little more human contact. I wiped my hands on my pants to get rid any pizza grease on them, and then tossed a one armed hug across Rei's shoulders. "You're a good kid, Rei."

Rei's reaction confirmed what I'd already suspected; nobody had ever given the kid a hug before. A lot of people don't understand the value of a good hug; it's basically human contact and affection distilled down to its purest form. I mean, I'm pretty sure that liking hugs is encoded into the human genome on a fundamental level. Sure enough, Rei initially went tense and stiffened at the unexpected contact, but before long she relaxed, and even leaned into the hug a bit. I felt a fresh surge of irritation at Gendo; it takes a real bastard to let a child go her entire life without letting her experience as much affection as a simple, harmless hug.

"Why are you doing this?" Rei'' voice was its usual monotone, but I'm pretty sure I picked up a hint of curiosity in there.

"No real reason." I said with a slight shrug. "Just felt like hugging you, that's all."

"The sensation is pleasant." Rei commented, leaning into the hug a bit more.

"Yeah, it is."

* * *

I wasn't particularly surprised when Gendo called me into his office the next day. I was a bit surprised that Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki were there too, but I guess he wanted to make a proper meeting out of this. Oh well, I was ready for the bastard.

"Why did you move the First Child into your residence?" Fuyutsuki took his normal role as Gendo's questioner, allowing Gendo himself to sit back and seem oh-so-reasonable and objective.

"Security." Bringing up the fact that her apartment was a sub-par craphole or that I wanted Rei to be happy and have a slightly more normal life wouldn't get much traction with anyone else in the room, so I needed to stick with facts and logic. "I visited Rei's apartment yesterday, and it basically has no threshold. You've read my security reports, you know why that's very bad."

That set Fuyutsuki on his back foot for a second, and Ritsuko took the opportunity to slip in a few words of her own. "That's odd; she's been living there for years, and if I remember right, her apartment should have a threshold by now, even if single-person apartments are less than ideal." Ritsuko frowned in thought for a moment, and asked. "Could it be related to her hybrid nature? Your report on thresholds did emphasize that they are tied to humanity, and she is not entirely human."

"It's certainly possible." I felt a brief flash of gratitude towards Ritsuko for phrasing her question in a way that helped me strengthen my case. "Rei's not entirely human, so she might not be able to generate much of a threshold; I know changelings and scions can have some issues with it."

Biology aside, I personally thought that Rei's incredibly weak threshold probably stemmed more from the fact that she did not think of her apartment as a home. Thresholds are all about that feeling of home-ness. However, when it came to Gendo, I figured that biology would probably make a much more persuasive argument than bringing up the whole emotion angle. Gendo had buried most of his emotions under thick layers of cynical pragmatism, so deep in his subconscious that they barely even existed anymore, and folks like that never understand just how important emotions really are.

"If Rei's ability to generate a threshold is an issue, it would seem sensible to move Rei into a new residence with a very strong pre-established threshold." Looks like Fuyutsuki had worked out his new angle of attack; instead of asking why Rei needed to move, he was questioning the wisdom of having her move in with me.

"Thresholds don't transfer that easily." I countered. "She couldn't just move into an unoccupied old family house and instantly benefit from its threshold. She needs to have some kind of connection to the building and its former occupants to benefit from a threshold they generated, like close friends or family. And if you tried moving her in with a family, it would mess up their threshold; she would be an outsider, intruding on their private home. Especially once you add in the presence of a security detail, not to mention the fact that you would probably be paying the family for taking her into their home."

I felt that there was no need to muddy the issue by mentioning that, if they found the right family, the threshold could eventually adjust to most of those problems. Besides, those kinds of adjustments take time, and with the fight against the Angels already in progress we didn't have a lot of time. Back when Nerv was just a research group it could mostly stay under the radar, but now that we were regularly getting into giant robot fights, Nerv was in the spotlight. Rei's weirdness would deter the occasional casual supernatural predator looking for a quick snack on whatever was convenient, but odds were that before long we would start getting hit by critters specifically interested in Nerv and the Evangelion. Rei couldn't afford taking a couple months to adjust to a new home. "Basically, the only way to get Rei behind a threshold quickly is to move her in somewhere that she would be completely welcome, and could adjust to very quickly."

"Your apartment would be the only option then." Ritsuko commented. "Rei's not very good at living. Well, perhaps Misato could take her in; she's adjusted to Shinji well enough."

"The Second Child's already due to move in with Misato." I mentioned. "Four people would be a bit too many for her apartment, and trying to raise three teenagers would give Misato too much to deal with. Not to mention that it would be a lot less troublesome if Rei lived with someone who knew about her being half-Angel."

Gendo finally descended from on high to mingle with the common folk. "The Jet Alone demonstration is next week."

It didn't take me very long to read between the lines there. In this corner, fulfilling decades of stereotyping, a giant robot the Japanese military-industrial complex had been putting together as an obvious competitor to the Evangelion. In the other corner, wearing a very fashionable leather duster, one wizard with a talent for making expensive hi-tech things die dramatically.

It wasn't exactly a secret that nobody at Nerv was very happy about the Jet Alone project. Nerv's near-unlimited budget and sweeping legal authority were a direct result of Nerv's monopoly on the Angel-killing business. Viable competition would mean huge budget cuts and the revocation of a lot of those legal privileges. Jet Alone wasn't really viable since it couldn't counter an Angel's AT Field, but that wouldn't matter until Jet Alone actually got into a dust-up with an Angel. The prototype would be a convenient enough political club to clobber Nerv with, and to the rich and powerful fatcats backing Jet Alone the fact that their little robot would get torn apart in real fight with an Angel or an Evangelion was an inconvenient detail. Large amounts of money and power were usually accompanied by ridiculously inflated egos and an impressive capacity to ignore any fact that didn't support their worldview.

Normally, I wouldn't go for industrial espionage, but Jet Alone was exactly the sort of ego project that could get a lot of people killed. Heck, if Nerv got hit hard by budget cuts before it became clear that Jet Alone was just a bunch of flash with no substance behind it, it could cause the Third Impact. There was no way Nerv could organize something on the scale of Operation Yashima again if it had to work with a limited budget and reduced authority. I would probably be doing the right thing, taking the project down. Or maybe I was just rationalizing. "So, I play saboteur, and you give me the kid?"

"You will have full responsibility as her Guardian." Gendo confirmed.

"Fine. Deal." I was surprised by how easy the whole thing had been; he'd barely even put up a fight.

I wasn't the only one to notice that. "Be wary, my host." Lash's voice spoke from my side. When I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, I barely managed to suppress a laugh when I saw her emulating Gendo's trademarked pose. "He ceded control over the girl far too readily."

Lash was right. Like Lea told me few days back, controlling the pilots was pretty close to controlling the Evangelions themselves. And Gendo had just handed me complete control over Rei without a fight. There were only two possible explanations; either Gendo was a complete idiot who had no idea how much power he had just given up to me, or I was missing an important part of the picture. Gendo Ikari was many things, but he was not a fool. Odds were, he was up to something. And whatever his game was, I had just played right into his hands.

* * *

"So, when are you going to introduce me to the new cupcake?" Bob asked eagerly.

I did my best to glare at the skull, which is a bit harder to pull off convincingly than you would think. "Bob, I'm pretty sure we've been through this before with Molly. My apprentices are not cupcakes, sweetcakes, Christmas cakes, birthday cakes, or any other type of cake, pastry, baked good, or candy."

"Yeah, whatever. So, when do I get to meet the nubile young teenage girl who's going to be hanging around with you from now on?"

I sighed, and decided there was no point in lecturing Bob on finer points of why objectifying women was a bad thing to do. "You won't be meeting Rei any time too soon." As far as I could tell Rei didn't have any actual magical talent, so I wouldn't need to worry about her using's Bob's vast knowledge and nearly nonexistent morality to do something unwise. That had always been my biggest worry with Molly; she'd always been a bit too eager to leap before she looked, and every once in a while she needed a bit of help understanding that good intentions didn't ensure good outcomes.

Even if I didn't need to worry about Rei using Bob to wreak some magical havoc, ever since the whole Kemmler thing I've tried to keep the fact that I own Bob from spreading around too much. After all, the bulk of the supernatural world would either want to kill me and claim Bob for themselves, or destroy Bob and quite likely kill me for the crime of owning Kemmler's former lab assistant. For that matter, I bet Gendo would just love to get his hands on a literal library of magical information that had to obey any orders its owner gave and had a nonexistent moral compass.

While I'd been pondering all that, Bob had continued going on about his lascivious fantasies. "If you really won't let me meet her, could you at least send her into the lab naked some day? I only ever got to see the last muffin –er – apprentice topless, and getting half the package just made me that much more curious to see the whole thing."

"When did you – oh yeah, that time her potion went crazy on her. On what was supposed to be my day off." That whole mess was years in the past now, but I was still a little bitter about it. I'd gone to all the trouble of arranging to give myself a nice quiet day off, only to get hammered with an extra-large helping of crazy that day. Story of my life.

"By the way, boss." Bob offered helpfully. "I did a bit of checking, and the age of consent in Japan is 13, so if you wanted to you could totally –"

"Finish that sentence, and I'll grind your skull up and sell the powder as an aphrodisiac to lonely old men." A shudder of revulsion shot through me. "Seriously. Thirteen? No. Just … no."

"Well, some local laws bump it up to eighteen. Seems silly you ask me. Why let five years of youthful bounciness go to waste? Besides, that's five years of fertility gone, and after the Second Impact you mortals really need to crank your numbers back up a bit."

"It's a morality thing." I had already learned from my time training Molly that Bob would never quite grasp the moral implications of things like 'young girls tend to be very emotionally vulnerable, and taking advantage of that is wrong' and 'getting involved with an apprentice would be a serious abuse of my position as her instructor and mentor, and undermine the student-teacher dynamic.' To be fair to the perverted spirit of intellect, once Molly had started growing up a bit I'd had to remind myself of those facts every once in a while as well.

Reminding myself that her father was a good friend of mine and a holy warrior of god who regularly killed demons with a sword I'm pretty sure is Excalibur helped keep those thoughts in check. I'm pretty sure that if I had ever taken sexual advantage of his daughter Michael's reaction would have been extremely painful, and quite possibly fatal.

Any further discussion on the matter ended when I heard Rei walk through the front door. Guess that meant school was over for the day. By the time I'd shushed Bob and walked out to greet her, she was already receiving Mouse's customary greeting of a few cheerful whuffs of breath and an unspoken but nonetheless quite clear request to have his ears scratched.

Once Rei saw me, she ceased petting mouse (something which severely disappointed the massive dogosaurus) and walked over to me, thrusting a sheet of paper towards me.

A quick glance told me what I needed to know; it was a standard form letter from her school. "To the Guardian of Rei Ayanami, yadda yadda, change of address … school records … parent teacher conference on career plans this Friday … right." I wonder what Gendo did about all the standard parental guardian stuff schools expected someone to take care of back when he'd been Rei's legal guardian. Probably either ignored it completely, or just passed it off to some underling. It's not like the sort of career counseling your average middle school could offer was really equipped to deal with Rei, or the rest of the Evangelion pilots; the odds that any of them would get to live anything resembling a normal life, even after the whole war against the Angels was over, was pretty close to nil. Not to mention that the big government pensions that were being set aside for all the Children to help people feel less guilty about using Child Soldiers meant they would be able to get along quite fine without any sort of job if the pilots and the world made it out of the fight with the Angels in one piece.

Then my eyes reached the name at the bottom of the otherwise uninteresting form letter, and I got one hell of a surprise.

I'm not sure how long I spent gaping at the letter, but it must have been fairly long, since Rei did something fairly unusual for her and initiated a conversation. "You stated we would begin my training after school."

"Oh. Right. Yes." I snapped my mind back to the present, and set aside the issue of just who this particular instructor of Rei's was. The only thing to do was go to the meeting and see what she wanted; calling in Nerv security would just make a big mess of things, not to mention poisoning my the alliance of convenience I had with the White Court. I'd burn that bridge eventually, but not until I had to.

"So Rei, let's get started." I went to kitchen, and found the bag of training materials I'd gotten from Misato. Practicing precision telekinesis with empty beer cans might not be the most classically wizard-y way to do magic training, but it was how Ebenezar taught me a lot of my early force magic. You have to respect tradition. Plus, with Misato being my semi-neighbor and all, I didn't need to worry about running out of empty cans any time soon.

The sheer number of empty beer cans Misato had lying around was a bit concerning, but as long as it hadn't caused any problems at Nerv or with her supervision of Shinji I wasn't inclined to get on her case about the fact that she was a bit of a heavy drinker. She was a semi-responsible adult, and had the right to screw up her own life in whatever manner she pleased. Besides, making a big deal out of her drinking would probably just get her angry and defensive.

"Alright Rei, here's the deal." I set three cans down in a line on the table, and then positioned Rei herself next to the table. "I want you to use your AT field to crush the middle can flat, and only the middle can." Once she got good enough to manage it while standing right next to the table and with a decent amount of space between the cans, I'd start backing her up and moving the cans closer together. Then there other variations on the theme like stacking the cans up and telling her crush only the top one without disturbing any of the ones below it.

Like most of the little exercises Ebenezar ran me through, it was more about learning patience and control than coming up with some new ultra-badass spell. I'm pretty sure I didn't learn a single new magic spell the entire time I was Ebenezar's apprentice; he had far more important things to teach me about. Like how to stay in control of your magic and always measure the consequences of each spell you cast. If you don't have the patience and self-control to flatten one can without knocking over three more cans, what happens when you need to start flinging magic around in a serious fight?

In my case, you go up against your psycho-crazy mentor, and end up burning his entire house down and killing the girl you were out to save along with him. I just hope Molly, Rei, and any other apprentices I pick up along the way never end up learning that way.

I heard the sound of crunching aluminum, and looked up to see one very thoroughly crushed can. And another equally crushed can on each side of the can Rei was supposed to hit. I picked the cans up, and noticed three circular impressions on the surface of the kitchen table where each of the cans had been. I waved the girl over, and silently pointed out the damage she'd inflicted on my table, before tossing out the three crushed cans and setting up new ones in their place. "Let's try that again with a bit less enthusiasm, alright padawan?"

Rei nodded, and once I backed off she started staring at the cans, presumably working with her AT Field and such. Hopefully I wouldn't have to put her through the nastiest, most downright mean lesson Ebenezar had ever hit me with.

Spending an entire week using magic to do everything hadn't been fun at all. You'd think that kind of thing would be simple for an up-and-coming wizard. You'd be wrong. Take it from me, cooking your dinner with fire spells is a hell of a lot harder than just using an oven, and I don't want to talk about what happened when Ebenezar took away everything from my hairbrush to the toilet paper and told me to just use magic to take care of my personal hygiene. By the end of the week, I'd gained a new appreciation for the simplicity of mundane solutions to everyday problems, and like most of Ebenezar's lessons I'd also picked up a valuable life lesson; magic isn't the solution to every problem. When I finally told the old man my conclusion, he just laughed and said he'd never thought of that before, and he'd really just made up the entire exercise for his own personal amusement at all my fumbling around.

I'm pretty sure he was just messing with me when he said that though.

Molly wound up getting the same lesson I did when I found out about her bright idea of using magic to 'encourage' a couple friends who had drug problems to clean up. It hadn't even occurred to the grasshopper that doing that was against the laws of magic; I'm just glad I found out what she was up to before she got past working on the theory of how to do it.

Rei's second attempt at crushing cans went a bit better than her first, and only inflict light damage on my kitchen table instead of seriously scarring it. Her third try went a bit too far in the other direction, and only sent her target can to wobbling with a couple dents in the top. Rei made the classic mistake of overcorrecting for her overcorrection, and her fourth effort wound up punching the center can straight through my kitchen table. Ouch. Good thing we lived on the ground floor, or I'd be worried for any downstairs neighbors.

It might have been my imagination, but I could swear Rei looked just the slightest bit sheepish when she declared. "Using my AT Field in such a precise manner is proving to be difficult."

"So I'd gathered." I frowned at the hole in kitchen table, trying to work out what I could do to help Rei focus her AT Field. When I'd been training Molly, or for that matter when I'd been getting my training, there were all kinds of handy little tools available. I'd started off with simple magical foci specifically designed to be easy to use, which basically served as training wheels. Obviously, that wouldn't do much good for someone who wasn't actually using magic, though.

I could run her through some basic rituals that would help her focus. Most of the simple wizard rituals were all about clearing the mind of every possible bit of distraction so you could completely focus on the task ahead. Wizards aren't the only people who can benefit from clearing their minds. Obviously that kind of ritual preparation wouldn't be practical for helping Rei use her AT Field in real-world conditions; I haven't met many baddies willing to put the fight on hold until I could finish an hour-long preparation ritual. However, for helping her get the hang of things, it should be fine.

There was one other trick I could have Rei try. It was a bit of an oddball idea, but it's not like there was any reason not to give it a shot. "Rei, try using an incantation next time."

Rei's face was at it's usual blank and unreadable state, but I'm pretty sure I could pick up a bit of skepticism coming off of the girl. "Incantations help to focus the mind of achieving a single outcome. Plus, they make good mental shortcuts; I can just say 'forzare' instead of having to think 'manifest a force effect and propel it forwards in the direction of my opponent.' Don't use a language you already know, or it won't help."

Granted, for all their usefulness as focusing tools, a big part of the reason wizards opted for incantations had to do with the fact that managing quick and dirty combat evocations was difficult as hell without them. Carefully thinking out a spell in the heat of battle is just about impossible, and any mix-ups could send your magic wild and cause you kinds of trouble. Since Rei wouldn't need to worry about needing a mental barrier between herself and her AT Field, having her use an incantation hadn't occurred to me until just now.

I set up a new trio of cans, and stepped back. A few seconds later, Rei very softly said "Forzare."

The center can crumpled perfectly, while the other two wobbled, but didn't seem to suffered anything worse than a glancing hit from her AT field. A quick check confirmed that my kitchen table hadn't picked up any new damage either. "Good work, padawan." That bit of praise got one of Rei's vanishingly rare smiles out of her, and I found myself smiling right back at her.

I replaced the crunched can with a new one. "We're not close to done, though; you still had a bit of wobble in the other cans, and doing it right once isn't enough; we need consistent results. We'll keep running through this exercise until you get it perfect ten times in a row. Then we'll move on to the next stage."

* * *

Since I'd never gone through the whole process in the US, I can't really say how the whole parent/teacher conference experience in Japan differs. The whole thing was actually pretty boring; all of her instructors offered some variation of the phrase 'Rei is a good student, but it would be good if she could socialize a bit more and make a few friends' and after hearing that half a dozen times it started getting dull. Rei not being very social wasn't exactly news to me to begin with.

Then we got to her English teacher. "Hello, Raith-sensei." Rei's voice sounded a bit odd when she said that, and it took me a second to figure out why. For once, she was speaking actual English instead of Japanese-translated-into-English-by-Lash. The fact that Rei's English had a Japanese accent which was, dare I say it, kind of cute was what tipped me off. Lash didn't do accents when she translated; pretty much everyone I talked to at Nerv sounded like they'd spent their entire lives living in Chicago. Sometime when I had nothing better to do, I should see about asking Lash to play around with her translation tricks and slap different accents on people. I could see much humor potential coming from things like slapping a Southern drawl on Rei or Misato.

For her part, 'Raith-sensei' led us to an empty classroom, and took quick look around to make sure we weren't in danger of being overheard. Our privacy secured, she turned around and hit me with a smile that was just as charming as I remembered it being. "Hello Harry. Fancy meeting you here."

"Yeah, fancy that." I turned to the blue-haired girl who had recently become my ward. "Rei, you mind giving us a few minutes?' Rei nodded, and left the room so I could have a nice little private chat with her English teacher. I folded my arms across my chest, and hit the woman in question with the closest thing I could muster to a scowl. "Aren't you supposed to be in California doing Feng Shui with Bobby?"

Inari Raith looked just a bit guilty when I mentioned that, but the expression didn't linger on her face for very long. "My sister needed my help." Inari responded levelly. "Lara's been very good to us; she gave Bobby and I the money we needed to start our business, and helped us find most of our clients when we were starting out."

I have to admit, I hadn't expected to run into Inari. Now that I thought about it, using Inari made plenty of sense for Lara. The de facto leader of the White Court probably knew enough about what was going on in Tokyo-3 to want some eyes and ears here. Heck, just the fact that I moved to Tokyo-3 and was involved with Nerv would make Lara very curious about what was going on, even before the giant robot fights started. Lara and I did have something of a habit of getting mixed up in each other's business after all. With Jade Court being so territorial, Lara couldn't send anyone vampy, or mortals who needed to be kept in line with vampire mojo. Inari was on the very short list of mortals that were clued in about the supernatural whom Lara could absolutely trust to help her and be loyal. The fact that Inari was also on the short list of people from House Raith that I actually genuinely liked probably figured into Lara's decision too.

It probably helped that Inari was the only person in Lara's family tree who wasn't in any position to start plotting against her, on account of being mortal and all. From what I had seen, Lara was genuinely fond of her little sister, but her fondness for Thomas hadn't stopped her from putting a bullet in him as soon as Thomas became a threat to her plans. Sure, Lara put a much nicer face on the White Court than her father had when he was in charge, but that wasn't because she was less of a monster. Lara just understood that you could catch more flied with honey, and didn't have her father's taste for pointless displays of petty villainy like killing a wizard for being a bit smart-mouthed or kicking stray dogs.

"So, you're doing a favor for big sister, and being her eyes and ears in Tokyo-3."

"More or less." Inari agreed. "I actually kind of enjoy teaching, and I must be a decent spy since nobody's tried to kill me yet. It's actually kind of fun, like being a spy movie or something. Lara told me to contact when I could find a way to do it without being conspicuous about it, and this seemed like a good opportunity, so … here we are."

Great, not only was Inari a spy, she was a total amateur at it. I suppose I should be grateful she wasn't making pithy one-liners and drinking martinis (shaken, not stirred). This could only end badly; I don't know what Nerv's security goons do to people they catch spying, but it probably didn't involve dressing her in pseudo-futuristic clothes and exchanging witty banter with her over a gourmet dinner. I wouldn't rule out overly elaborate slow-moving deathtraps though. "So, Lara wanted you to contact me. Super. What does big sister want?"

Inari's face screwed up in a look of concentration that was cute enough to remind me that not all the attractiveness of the Raith clan came from supernatural mojo. I guess it was lucky for the boys in the class that Inari had opted to not go vampire; Lara and most other White Court vamps had enough supernatural come-hither to turn off my brain and transform me into hormonal teenager again. I could only imagine what White Court moho would do to a bunch of teenagers guys who already had a hard time not thinking with their hormones most of the time.

When Inari finally answered my question, her words seemed just a bit stilted, and I guessed that she was repeating the words from memory. "While the influence of the White Court is much reduced in another Court's territory, the White Court if far from powerless in Japan. Should you have need and cause, thie White Court's influence can act in your favor."

Interesting, but not exactly shocking. Lara had made something of a habit of being oh-so-willing to help as long as there was something in it for her.

Inari went quiet for a bit, and then added. "A couple days ago Lara also told me to tell you to go back to Chicago and visit her, because there were things she wanted to talk to you about. That's the other reason I decided to get in contact with you now."

So, Lara wanted to talk to me. Super. It had been too long since the last time I had a chance to talk to something that wanted to eat me. Oh well, at least I could take a few hours to check up on everyone in Chicago. I hadn't had really been able to keep in touch with a lot of folks since moving to Tokyo-3; I wanted Molly and Thomas to both stay off of Gendo's radar, and I wouldn't put it past Gendo to take a look at my mail and phone records. Calling my former apprentice and half-brother every week would kind of giveaway that the two of them were really important to me.

I should be safe making an in-person visit though; Gendo had plenty of resources, but those resources were mostly in Japan. Political appointees who weren't terribly fond of Gendo ran the two US branches of Nerv, so even if he knew I was heading to Chicago he couldn't just stick a couple security goons on me as tails. And if he somehow managed to pull it off despite the office politics – well, I'd dealt with people trying to tail me before, and a couple security goons was nothing compared to some of the supernatural critters I've had to lose in my time.

I wasn't going to hurry though; I wasn't exactly happy about Lara sticking spies into my business, and I definitely wasn't going to go running to meet her the instant she called. Whatever it was she wanted, it could afford to wait until I was in the mood to spare her some of my time.

None of that was Inari's fault though; she'd just been dragged into this mess out of loyalty to her big sister. "Anything else I need to know?"

"That's everything Lara said to tell you." Inari answered. A moment later, she got a bit of a grin when she added. "By the way, Rei is one of my best students. Turns in her homework on time, gets good grades, no goofing off in class or spending time talking to friends instead of paying attention." Inari thought for a moment, and then added. "In fact, she could probably stand to do a bit more socializing; I don't think she has many friends."

Of course, the day just wouldn't have been complete without me getting to hear that little turn of phrase again.


	18. Harry XV

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I am not Jim Butcher, or anyone else who owns the legal rights to the Dresden Files. If I were, I would be utterly terrified of the reaction once people found out I was writing this instead of the next book in the series.

I am also not Hideaki Anno, or anyone who owns the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I were, I would be spending my time sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women instead of writing crossover fanfiction.

* * *

They were making me wear a dress uniform.

As a general rule, I'm not much for dressing up. I'm perfectly comfortable running around in a ratty old T-shirt, jeans that have a respectable number of holes in them, and of course my trusty leather duster. There's a reason people like casual clothes; they're comfortable. Uniforms, not so much. Nerv had a close to unlimited budget, but none of that money had been put into finding a way to make the uniform both stylish and comfortable.

Unfortunately since I was supposed to be one of Nerv's official representatives at the testing of Jet Alone, apparently I had to project a proper image of dignified professionalism. I can handle being professional, but I'm pretty sure I'm incapable of being dignified, no matter how fancy the monkey suit someone shoves me into is.

Lash wasn't helping things. The Fallen's illusionary form looked me over critically, and declared. "My goodness Harry, you're a shave and a haircut away from looking like a proper gentleman."

"Good thing I don't have two bits to spare." I grumbled back. Complaint #183 about the Nerv Uniform; there wasn't anywhere on it I could hide a gun. Sure, there a nice hip holster, but that was right out in the open where anyone could see it. Half the fun of using a gun as a wizard is that nobody expects a spellslinger to have one.

Speaking of wizarding, apparently most of my best wizarding gear also fell under the category of damaging to Nerv's dignity for a public event. Yeah, I technically didn't need to have my staff, my enchanted duster, or most of my kinetic force rings to make a public appearance and perform a bit of subtle sabotage, but I still felt uncomfortably vulnerable without them. Chalk it up to good old wizard paranoia.

I slipped the black Nerv dress jacket on, and very reluctantly zipped it all the way up. Protocol said I had to, despite the fact that Gendo always leaves his jacket hanging open. Guess that's one of the perks of being the boss. "Your jacket is sitting slightly crooked." Lash commented. "A little tug to the right should fix it."

"What makes you think I care if my jacket is crooked?"

Lash sighed and rolled her eyes. "It wouldn't hurt you to put a bit more thought into your appearance, my host."

"If it's that important to you, then how about you fix it?" I snapped.

Lash let out a soft annoyed growl. "You are impossibly frustrating." Lash's illusionary form slipped away, leaving me in peace. I took a quick look at myself in the mirror, and despite my general displeasure about the whole uniform thing, I've got to admit Lash might have had a bit of a point. I looked quite a bit less scruffy and disreputable when you put me in the admittedly stylish Nerv dress uniform. Clean me up a bit, and I might even start looking a bit respectable. Satisfied that everything was in place, I turned around to leave.

And found Rei standing a couple feet behind me.

"Gyah!" I gave a little jump in surprise. Rei, as was her nature, showed no reaction at all. "I should start hanging a bell around your neck or something, so you can't sneak up behind me any more."

"I was not sneaking." Rei answered flatly.

"If I didn't hear you coming up behind me, you were sneaking." I shot back. Knowing Rei, it was probably true that she hadn't meant to startle me; she's just so quiet by nature that it's easy to lose track of her sometimes. Heck, for the first few days after she'd moved in with me, when I couldn't see her it was easy to forget that I wasn't living alone any more.

"So, I should be back before dinnertime. I left some money on the table for you go get some Burger King or something if I end up running late" I'd told her all of this last night, but I felt like I should say it one more time before I left. "Mouse'll probably want to go for a walk once you get back from school."

Rei nodded.

"Alright … well then … see you when I'm back."

* * *

Japan Heavy Chemical Industries had really pulled out all the stops when it came to the public unveiling of their new giant deathbot. It made quite the contrast to how Nerv generally operated. Heck, the simple fact that they were doing a public unveiling at all when Nerv was still doing its level best to ignore the fact that the public existed was telling. In fact, I'm pretty sure that was how they'd planned the entire event from start to finish. This whole circus was about politics, money, and influence peddling, not about who actually had the better weapons system.

Considering that, it was no surprise that the company and their officials were really hammering on the 'we're not Nerv' angle at every opportunity. Nerv was secretive and standoffish, so JHCI was jumping into the spotlight. Nerv generally treated every other government agency like an annoyances or a servant, so the JHCI people couldn't go five minutes without mentioning how Jet Alone was made in cooperation with official from the UN, the JSSDF, and every other set of initials you could think of.

I have to admit, when it came to PR JHCI was kicking our asses. I guess that's to be expected though; a private company would know all about the importance a politicking and ass-kissing when it comes to getting things done. Nerv's never really been very good at that kind of diplomacy. The fact that Gendo and his non-existent social skills were running the show didn't really help. The man might be really good at getting whatever he wanted, but he was such a cold-hearted bastard that he never really figured out a way to do it that didn't piss people off. I was ample proof of the fact that to Gendo Ikari, it didn't really matter if you hated his guts, as long as you did what he wanted.

As a general rule, powerful men have huge egos, and hate it whenever someone tells them what to do. Gendo Ikari never asked, never persuaded, and almost never compromised; he used whatever nasty, manipulative, underhanded tricks it took to get his way. Considering the monopoly Nerv had on the Angel-fighting business, he had the legal authority to get what he wanted while acting with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Operation Yashima probably hadn't helped things; requisitioning Japan's entire power grid and everything else we needed to pull that off made it very obvious just how far Nerv's authority could go, and with the time constraints we were operating under Nerv didn't have time to be nice about getting what we needed. Jet Alone had been in the works for years, but after Nerv stepped on so many toes there were even more people pissed off at us than there'd been before.

Jet Alone was that attitude finally coming back to bite Nerv in the ass. A whole lot of powerful men were sick of putting up with Gendo's crap, and they'd all tossed their support behind the first thing that looked like a viable alternative to Nerv. Most of those powerful men didn't know anything about the Evangelion beyond the 'official' story of it being a giant robot; we were keeping the whole soul-eating alien cyborg thing on the down-low. They saw a private company that could offer another giant robot that cost less than the Evas, and was run by people who knew how to play the political game, and jumped at the opportunity.

Heck, if Jet Alone actually had a chance in hell of working, I'd probably be signing up with them too.

JHCI had invited pretty much all the senior Nerv staff to the unveiling, no doubt hoping to drag Ikari out of his cave in order to show him up publicly. Ritsuko and I were the only ones who actually showed up, which I'm pretty sure was meant as a counter-snub of some kind.

The two of us were definitely the odds ones out, considering the fact that aside from the media people everyone else who'd been invited to the unveiling of Jet Alone had a role in the project. It didn't help that I was the only non-Japanese person in the room, and Ristuko seemed to be the only woman in the room who wasn't there as someone assistant, secretary, or arm candy. The halls of the rich and powerful have always been a boys club, especially in a nation like Japan that had always been a bit old-fashioned when it came to some of their ideas about gender roles, and gotten even more so after the Second impact.

After the Impact the usual collection of crazies blamed the disaster on everything under the sun, with social change and formerly oppressed minorities that were slowly crawling their way to equality were always popular scapegoats. In some nations, like Japan, the ultraconservatives actually managed to get enough traction to turn back the clock a bit, or at least keep things from moving further forward. Other places went the opposite way, and actually jumped forward socially, since we all had to work together after the apocalypse. People are weird and inconsistent that way.

After about half an hour where everyone else hobnobbed and socialized while we were conspicuously ignored, which I guess was to be expected. Like most of these sorts of high-powered events, they served lunch right before the presentation/unveiling, because you can't expect a politician to sit through a presentation about preventing the extinction of the human race on an empty stomach.

Ritsuko and I had an entire massive table to ourselves. Either someone had been under the impression that Nerv intended to show up in force, or we were getting snubbed again.

Once the fatcats were fed and watered, it was on to the main event. A few people who I didn't really recognize (maybe if I actually paid attention to Japanese politics and business I would've known who they were) gave a few speeches that could basically be summed up as 'Jet Alone is awesome, and I was involved in making it so I'm awesome too.' I pretty much zoned it all out; high tech robots are not my field of expertise, and living in Chicago had given me a low tolerance for political BS.

Eventually the CEO of JHCI, introduced as Shiro Tokita, stepped up to the podium, and after an appropriate amount of sycophantic applause, gave a brief statement. "On behalf of the employees of Japan Heavy Chemical Industries and everyone involved in the Jet Alone project, I would like to thank you all for coming to the unveiling of Jet Alone. I believe I don't need to tell you anything more about Jet Alone; its upcoming performance will demonstrate far more than mere words could offer. Before we move to the control room to view demonstration, would anyone like to ask any questions?"

To my surprise, Ritsuko raised her hand. I'd kind of expected that the two of us would just try to fade into the background, to the extent that such a thing was possible. One of the minor functionaries rushed out and handed her a microphone.

"Ah, the famous Doctor Ritsuko Akagi, of Nerv." Tokita announced. "I'm very glad to see such a distinguished person in our audience. Please, ask your question."

"Thank you. Now, according to the earlier speeches discussing Jet Alone's capabilities, Jet Alone is equipped with an internal power supply." At least one of us had been paying attention to all the technobabble about what the giant robot could do.

"Yes." The man responded. "It's one of the main features of Jet Alone. It's self-contained power-supply should allow for 150 days of continuous operation without needing to shut down or be refueled."

"Yes, that's quite impressive." Ritsuko managed to sound both politely impressed and dismissive at the same time. "However, I think there are serious safety concerns about installing a nuclear reactor in a weapons system meant for close-range ground combat."

It took all of my self-discipline not to jump out of my seat when I heard that. That's what I get for zoning out during the technical briefing; I'd missed that the giant robot was nuclear powered! That's … kind of a big thing to miss. I mean, there's a reason that, better control over my techbane field or not, I stay far away from anything with the word nuclear in its name. Heck, there'd been a few rumors that wizard's getting too close to nuclear power plants was what caused Chernobyl and/or Three Mile Island.

This must have been what Gendo had planned the entire to screw up my efforts to give Rei a halfway-normal life. He had to have known that Jet Alone was nuclear-powered, and he knew me well enough to know that I wouldn't go through with hexing it once I found out about that little detail. I wouldn't have any choice but to drop out of our deal at the last minute, and that would give Gendo all the justification he needed to put the kibosh of me serving as Rei's guardian. He'd offered me a very reasonable deal, and I'd welched on upholding my end of it.

I snapped out of my mental crisis in time to catch the tail end of Tokita making a crack about how his giant robot wasn't limited to five minutes of power. I think I'd rather have a robot with a limited power supply than one that'll pop up a mushroom cloud when an Angel kicks its ass, thanks anyway though. Besides, 150 days of operating power was just plain excessive; the Angels managed to cause plenty of damage to the Evas in a couple of minutes, and there was no point in having five months of power when it would need to spend almost all its non-combat time down for maintenance.

"What about the remote control systems?" Ritsuko asked. "The receiver or transmitter could easily be damaged in combat conditions."

"You would prefer Nerv's solution of leaving it up to child soldiers?" It was hard not to flinch when just about everyone in the room turned to glare at us. Well, so much for that little secret; Nerv might not be very publicity-conscious, but even Gendo knew that keeping the whole child soldier thing under wraps was a very good idea. Oh well, it was only a matter of time before that particular cat got out of the bag, especially after Shinji had outed himself to his classmates.

If I had to guess, Ritsuko must have been planning to put in a little prep-work so that all the issues she raised would be validated when Jet Alone failed, but there was no way she would get very far with the crowd after the Children had been revealed. After all, the only way we could explain why we needed to throw fourteen-year-old kids into the Evas would be to give out a whole lot of the nasty secrets about how we made the Evangelions. That wasn't going to happen, which meant there was no hope of winning the crowd over to our side. "Might be a good idea to just drop it, Ritsuko."

Ritsuko didn't take my advice. "Being controlled by multiple technicians instead of a single pilot could cause problems with coordination."

"Even if it does, that's better than a weapon that can go completely out of control." Tokita shot back with a smirk, producing a file folder that was very clearly marked as something he shouldn't have access to. "A weapon you can't even control is just as dangerous to us as it is to the enemy. Your Evangelion is like a hysterical woman, nobody can deal with it."

The sexist crack got a laugh out of most of the audience. Like I said, Japan is behind the times. My self-control slipped for a bit, and Ritsuko's microphone let out a piercing feedback screech that left most of the audience yelling in pain and clutching their ears. Serves them right.

To her credit, Ritsuko didn't give more than a slight twitch at the nasty mood of the audience or the feedback from her microphone, she just soldiered on as if neither of those things had happened. I made a mental note to never play poker against her. "Controlling the Evangelion is what our pilots and technology are for."

"Ah yes, technology." Tokita drawled. "Like the American magician you hired? " The CEO turned his gaze on me. "Have I mentioned what a pleasant surprise it is to have you here to witness our demonstration, Mr. Dresden. I must confess, I've never had the chance to meet a wizard before. This must be quite a step up from providing entertainment at children's birthday parties and conning old women out of their life's savings with a few parlor tricks."

That got a laugh out of audience at my expense. I was only vaguely tempted to smash Tokita through a few walls; I've long since stopped caring that most normal folks don't believe in magic and assume I must be some kind of fake. The only time skeptics really bug me is when they actually manage to get in the way of me helping people. This guy and most of the other folks in the room were greedy corporate scumbags, politicians, or military folks in the pockets of said scumbags and politicians. I could really give a crap about their opinions. Let them laugh.

Ritsuko covered the microphone with her hand. "Don't give him a reaction, he's trying to provoke you."

I took a page from Rei's book and just nodded in response. There was no point in arguing with a full-on skeptic. If I'd been in America I might have tried smartassing him, but between the culture gap and the language gap, I wasn't sure how well that would actually work. Lash's translation-work might be perfectly accurate, but sometimes humor and smartassery just don't quite translate. Tokita watched me, waiting for me to say or do something that he could pounce on and use against me and Nerv, but I gave him absolutely nothing to work with.

After a short standoff Ritsuko spoke up again. "Nothing you can say changes the fact that Jet Alone does not have the capacity to engage and destroy an Angel. No conventional weapon can."

"Ah yes, because of the AT Field?" That remark set Ritsuko's eyebrows to twitching, the first sign of emotion I'd seen from the woman during the entire standoff. Tokita had already tossed out several of Nerv's secrets, but the AT Field was probably Nerv's most closely guarded secret, other than the stuff like Rei's true nature that was restricted to the inner circle of Nerv's leadership.

"Our engineers are close to a breakthrough in dealing with that issue." Tokita claimed in what I was almost sure was a bald-faced lie. "I understand that you find it difficult for you to accept that Nerv's time is ending, Miss Akagi." The subtle barb at her gender set off another round of chuckles within the crowd; Ritsuko looked to be about one more exchange away from blowing her top completely. Time to defuse things.

"Hexus." I whispered under my breath. The microphone in Ritsuko's hand died noisily. I took a bit of vindictive pleasure in the way everyone started groaning and clutching the ears from the feedback screech, especially after Lash did a little trick with my hearing to edit the noise out. Still feeling a bit pissed, I tossed a second hex at Tokita, to kill his cell phone and whatever other personal electronics he had. Yeah, it was a bit petty, but it made me feel better.

Everyone in the room loudly complaining about the feedback noise and a couple techs scrambling around to try and fix it did at least put a damper on the presentation, and gave me a cover to take Ritsuko and get out of there for a bit. She needed to cool off, and we needed to talk about the whole nuclear thing.

The two of us ducked into an empty locker room, and after a quick look around to make sure we were alone, I said. "You alright? Looked like he was getting to you back there."

Ritsuko's face was already back to its normal calm mask. It was actually a bit unsetting, how she'd gone from seriously pissed off to totally calm again. I've always been a bit wary of anyone who can bury anger that quickly; usually, that just means they're bottling it all up, and one day it's going to explode. "Yes." Ritsuko's answer was eerily calm. "It was really petty when you think about it. He just wants to show off and have people praise him. He's a petty man."

Ritsuko casually pulled out the information pamphlet we'd been given on Jet Alone, pulled out her lighter, and set the thing on fire. Well, at least she'd found a way to vent that anger. "It seems we have an intelligence leak at Nerv." She commented idly after she tossed the flaming pamphlet into a trash can.

"Looks like it. Somebody in the Security division's probably going to lose his job over that." I took a deep breath, and moved on to my main concern. "I'm a little worried though. If something were to go wrong with Jet Alone and its nuclear reactor…" We might be in a random and seemingly empty room, but I wasn't going to take a chance that somebody might pass by and hear something incriminating. I didn't make it this long in the wizard business by taking a lot of unnecessary risks.

Ritsuko knew how to read between the lines. "I don't believe it should be an issue. The reactor is contained within the torso, so as long as the torso isn't damaged nothing should go wrong."

She had a point. I mean, my techbusting hex isn't the most precise weapon out there, but against a giant robot I could probably hit it in the foot or knee without effecting the torso. Having the thing topple over on its first step would be more than sufficient to embarrass the hell out of its backers and pretty much kill the project's political support. "Still, I just don't like the idea. Nukes are dangerous business. Are we gonna end up with a mushroom cloud the first time an Angel punches it in the chest."

Ritsuko frowned over at me. "You don't know much about how nuclear reactors work, do you Mister Dresden?"

I shrugged. "Unless it's using magical plutonium, it's not really my area."

"Modern nuclear reactors have the control rods suspended above the reactor by electromagnets. In the event of any malfunction, the control rods drop fully into the reactor, and effectively end any ongoing reaction. Even in the event of complete power failure, since there would be no more power, the electromagnets would no longer work, and the control rods would fall. We've learned from previous nuclear disasters, especially the ones that happened after the Second Impact. Improvements in technology have made it impossible for something like Chernobyl to happen again. Modern reactors have passive safety measures; without active human intervention to keep the reactor running, it will shut down, and turning a reactor into a nuclear bomb is simply impossible."

"Impossible?" I was a little skeptical of that; there's no such thing as a piece of technology that can't fail, especially when magical techbane gets mixed in with the matter. "You seemed rather concerned about the possibility of it earlier."

"Extensive combat damage could breach the containment vessel and cause radiation leaks." Ritsuko explained. "But an outright meltdown simply couldn't happen. It would violate the laws of physics."

I was still hesitant. I'll admit, I don't know jack about the subject, while Ritsuko was much more informed, and she seemed to think it was safe. On the other hand, about the only thing I really know about nukes is that they're bad juju, and shouldn't be messed with.

But if I backed off now, Gendo would win.

"So," I began very hesitantly. "You can give me an absolute, total guarantee that there's not going to be a mushroom cloud if something were to go wrong with Jet Alone."

"Yes." Ristuko answered confidently. "It's physically impossible."

I sent a mental inquiry in Lash's general direction, and the shadow's illusionary form appeared long enough to give a slight shrug. "The finer points of nuclear reactor design and advances within the field in the last decade are not my area of expertise."

Not what I'd wanted to hear, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Lash was out of her element. Heck, I was downright tech-savvy for someone from the supernatural side of things, but by the standards of basic vanilla mortals I was still pretty clueless. Ritsuko, on the other hand, was a science-y type person even though she was really more of a computer and Evangelion expert than someone who know a lot about nuclear stuff she was still better grounded than me. She was sure it was safe to carry on with the mission and bust the giant robot.

I was still tempted to scrap the mission anyway. I didn't really have a clear, rational reason for it; I just wasn't comfortable messing around with anything nuclear, no matter how many experts told me it was perfectly safe. Gendo could find someone else to do his dirty work.

But that would mean giving up Rei. I'd been trying to get the girl to open up and start living something resembling a normal, healthy human life. I'm not sure exactly what Gendo has planned for her, but I'm pretty sure it's not anything involving the kid's happiness. Gendo was a user. Letting Rei fall back into his hands was not going to end well for her; Gendo Ikari doesn't give a crap about anyone or anything other than his goals. Not the kind of man I wanted having any power over Rei.

Besides, Ritsuko said it was safe, and it was her job to know this kind of technology stuff. "Alright, on with the show."

The two of us were some of the last ones to arrive at the control room. Most of the people here for the show had clustered around the windows at the front of the room, jockeying around for a good view. After a bit of polite jostling, I managed to get a pretty clear view of the robot. They'd gone for much more inhuman design for Jet Alone compared to the Evas, doing away with the head and neck entirely and just slapping all the sensors and stuff into the upper torso.

Personally, designing a giant humanoid robot seemed kind of silly to me. The fact that it was useless for actually fighting Angels aside, the human body isn't really all that built for combat. As I'd learned several times over the course of my career, when it came to most purely physical tasks, four legs good, two legs bad. Better balance, better speed, and generally a heck of a lot suited to battle. Humans were dangerous because of their brains, not their bodies.

The Evas were human-shaped because that's how the chunks of Adam and Lilith's DNA we'd used to make them had turned out. Jet Alone had no reason to be humanoid beyond pure vanity.

One of the generals here for the presentation caught my eye, looked back at Ritsuko, and shot me a knowing smirk. Guess he must think Ritsuko and I had snuck out for a quickie. If I'd been in his shoes and noticed a healthy, reasonably good-looking man and woman had snuck off for some alone time I'd probably think the same thing, and letting him think I was banging the scientist beat the hell out of anyone knowing or even suspecting the truth.

Jet Alone's big boss seemed to have been waiting for us as well, and couldn't resist the opportunity to get another barb in. "Now that our esteemed colleagues from Nerv have finally deigned to join us, shall we proceed?" After another round of sycophantic chuckles, he ordered his underlings to get started.

After about a minute or so of various technobabble, the robot took a single step. From the reaction of the crowd, you'd think that it had actually done something impressive.

I decided to nail the bot on its second step. There was point in sabotaging it halfway through the trial, where any mix-ups could be laughed away as a minor glitch in the system that obviously be fixed in the production model. It needed to fail on a basic, fundamental level, like not being able to take two step s without falling over flat on its face. Besides, after Shinji's first outing in the Evangelion a part of me liked the irony of having their giant robot fall down after taking two steps as well.

As Jet Alone's foot came up for the second step, I focused on the right leg, which was supporting all of its weight at the moment, and disguised my incantation of "Hexus" as a sudden coughing fit.

The robot wobbled for a bit on the single foot supporting its weight, and everyone in the room let out a collective gasp at the sight of the robot's loss of balance. For a moment I thought that it might actually manage to recover its balance and I'd have to hit it again to actually topple it, but with then the robot's right knee suddenly buckled, and the whole thing toppled over with stunningly fast. Even though the robot hit the ground a mile and change away from us, we could feel the ground shaking, and the glass in the observation windows developed several cracks.

I shot a quick glance back at Tokita. The CEO's look of shock and horror on his face was absolutely priceless. I always make a point of stopping to appreciate the little things in life, like the look on a jerk's face when he gets his comeuppance.

After a couple seconds of shocked silence, muttering started up from the crowd. It took Tokita a couple more seconds to regain his with, hissing something angrily to the nearest tech before announcing very shakily. "Just a little glitch in the system, we should have it fixed in no time at all."

The muttering in the crowd died down for a bit, but as seconds turned into minutes the mood quickly turned ugly. Tokita was looking increasingly frantic as he scrambled around the room, badgering every tech he could his hands on in a desperate effort to get the robot back on its feet before his big moment in the spotlight was completely ruined.

"Sir!" One of the techs called out loudly, trying to get the CEO's attention. "We have a problem!"

"Well of course we have a problem!" Tokita snapped, waving a hand at the fallen robot.

"No sir, it's the reactor. Something must have been damaged when it fell; It's not accepting any commands!"

Every single other conversation in the room died as soon as those words came out. I shot a nervous look at Ritsuko, but the scientist still seemed confident and unworried. After a few terrified seconds, Ritsuko spoke up. "So much for having 150 days worth of power. Not that it would do a robot that can't even walk any good."

"This is no time for jokes!" Tokita practically shrieked. All the observers were already getting nervous and Tokita's blindingly obvious panic wasn't helping things in the slightest.

"What's going on?" I asked, putting my newly acquired knowledge to use. "I thought those fourth generation reactors were supposed to just shut down automatically if anything went wrong."

Tokita froze, and after a long moment very quietly answered. "The production models were going to be equipped with fourth generation reactors, but for the prototype the board didn't want to – well, we decided to enact certain … cost saving measures." By the time he got to the end of that statement Tokia's voice had trailed off to an embarrassed mumble.

Cost saving measures? Of all the things to save money on, they skimped on nuclear safety? Corporate idiot greed at its finest.

Any moment now the truth would start sinking in and everyone would go into panic mode. I quickly made my way to Ritsuko's side. "I think it's time for us to get to the VTOL. Now."

* * *

Gendo Ikari had called us in as soon as our VTOL got back to Tokyo-3. After Ritsuko and I arrived at his office, he silently looked at the two of us, sitting in his usual unreadable pose. After several seconds, standing at Gendo's side as always, spoke up. "Japan Heavy Chemical Industries claims that they were able to reboot their systems and reduce the core temperature within the reactor before any containment breach occurred. While the situation appears to have stabilized, temperature readings from within the core indicate that a partial meltdown might have occurred. However, there are no indications at this time of a containment breach."

Fuyutsuki shot a glance at Gendo out of the corner of his eye, and I noticed a very slight frown on his face. "Perhaps if a similar situation should arise in the future, we should leave Mister Dresden out of the equation, and pursue more conventional means of sabotage."

Gendo himself met Ritsuko and I with his bespectacled gaze and finally spoke. "Well done."

It took all my self-control not to blast him to bit right then and there. "Well done?" My voice came out in a deadly quiet hiss. "That's it? We just caused a nuclear meltdown, and that's all you have to say for yourself? Well done?"

Gendo remained calm and emotionless. "It was an acceptable outcome. If Jet Alone had merely failed, they would simply repair it and try again. A nuclear incident should serve as a sufficient deterrent to any further pursuit of a similar project."

That removed any doubt from my mind. "You son of a bitch!" In the space of a second I was over Gendo's desk and had two fistfuls of the man's jacket, forcing him out of his chair and his comfy little Gendo pose. If there had been a wall handy, I would have slammed him into it. "You knew, didn't you? You knew they'd stuck a crappy old reactor into their prototype! You knew this was going to happen! You were counting on it."

Gendo, his glasses knocked askew by my assault met my gaze directly. We'd already soul-gazed, so there was no reason to be afraid of looking me in the eye. "Yes." The man confirmed.

I might have completely snapped and started wailing on Gendo if I hadn't felt Fuyutsuki put a hand on my shoulder. He wasn't being rough or anything, but the message was clear; he wasn't going to just stand aside and let me beat his boss to a pulp like I so dearly wanted to do. I knew the old man couldn't actually take me in a fight, even before magic entered the equation, but it still gave me cause for pause.

Gendo must have noticed my moment of hesitation. "Do you intend to kill me, Mister Dresden?" From the way he said it, you'd think we were discussing the weather, not the possibility of his eminent painful and messy death.

I have to admit, in my current state of pissed-offedness the idea was more than a little tempting. Not quite tempting enough to actually go through with though. After all, I'd probably end up having to blast my way completely out of Nerv HQ just to get away after I killed him, and then I'd be spending the rest of my life as a fugitive. Not to mention that between killing the top man and blasting through a big chunk of Nerv HQ, I might wind up seriously damaging Nerv's ability to actually stop the Angels. I wasn't quite pissed off enough to endanger the entire human race just for the momentary satisfaction of killing the son of a bitch.

Even if I wasn't quite angry enough for murder, I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of making me back down. "Fuck you."

Gendo didn't give the slightest twitch. "Do you intend to tender your resignation from Nerv?"

Once again, very tempting, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't just ignore a threat to the entire human race. Oh, I could get pissed off and tell the bastard I wouldn't work with him anymore, but I just wouldn't be able to turn my back on everything and everyone here at Nerv. I might be able to walk away, but once I'd had a few days to calm down I wouldn't be able to stay away.

No way in hell I would give Gendo the satisfaction of watching me come crawling back to him. "I want you to remember something, Gendo. I'm with Nerv because you guys are the only game in town that can actually stop the Angels. I get that sometimes we have to do nasty stuff for the greater good. I don't like it one damn bit, but I get that this is how it is. Hell, I even get that in a world as screwed up as ours is, a nasty little bastard like you might be necessary to get things down. So yeah, I'll stick with Nerv. You better watch your ass though; the Angels won't be around forever, and you're not going to enjoy what happens if I ever decide your bastardness outweighs your usefulness."

If my threat had any effect on Gendo, he didn't show it. The two of us stood there for a long moment, me giving the man my best death glare, and Gendo looking at me with bored disinterest. The tension finally broke when his phone started ringing. "Are you going to let me answer my phone, Mister Dresden?"

I gave the man a little bit of a shove when I finally let him go, and shrugged off the restraining hand Fuyutsuki had on my shoulder. Gendo sat down at his desk, picked up his phone, and started talking as if I hadn't just tossed a couple death threats his way. I guess sometimes there are benefits to being cold as ice.

I was halfway out the door when Gendo interrupted his phone conversation. "Mister Dresden, wait a moment." I was really tempted to just keep walking, but I waited. A part of me really, really hoped that Gendo was going to say something that would push me over the edge. Sure, snapping and blowing him into tiny little bastard bits would be a really stupid move from the rational, long-term perspective, but it would still feel really, really good.

After a minute to wrap up his phone conversation, Gendo hung up his phone. Then, with a disturbingly icy calm, he announced. "Someone just attempted to assassinate the Children."


End file.
